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THE  EEJECTED  STONE: 


OR 


INSURRECTION  vs.  RESURRECTION 


IX 


A  M  E  E  I  C  A 


BY  A  NATIVE  OF  VIRGINIA. 


BOSTON: 
WALKER,     WISE,    AND     COMPANY, 

245    WASHINGTON   STREET. 
1861. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1861,  by 
WALKER,    WISE,    AXD    COMPANY, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


University  Press,  Cambridge : 
Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  and  Company. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.  UNION ? 

II.  UNMASK! 9 

III.  PILATE 14 

IV.  BETWEEN  us  BE  TRUTH! 15 

V.  THE  ORGANIC  LAW 19 

VI.  THE  REJECTED  STONE        .....  24 

VII.  CONSERVATION 29 

VIII.  COMPROMISE 31 

IX.  BROKEN 43 

X.  THE  PRIVATEER 48 

XI.  A  FOREIGN  POWER 50 

XII.  MANASSES 58 

XIII.  BETH-EL 68 

XIV.  A  REBELLION  vs.  A  REVOLUTION       ...  75 
XV.  EXCALIBUR 85 

XVI.  A  FELICITATION 91 

XVII.  To  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  .  94 

XVIII.  To  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  .  .  .  .  113 

XIX.  THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE   .  117 


931515 


LORD  BACON  recommends  that  all  important  affairs  should 
be  committed  first  to  Argus  with  an  hundred  eyes,  and  after 
ward  to  Briareus  with  an  hundred  arms.  Things,  he  re 
marks,  will  have  their  first  or  second  agitation.  If  they  be 
not  tossed  upon  the  arguments  of  counsel,  they  will  be  tossed 
upon  the  waves  of  fortune. 

The  hundred  arms  have  laid  hold  on  the  American  ques 
tion  ;  whether  the  hundred  eyes  have  done  or  are  doing  their 
work  is  doubtful. 

The  daily  press  brings  to  each  household  its  presentation 
of  "  the  situation,"  in  a  military  aspect ;  but  the  ever-develop 
ing  moral  and  historical  situation  is  much  neglected,  or,  for 
reasons  of  state,  suppressed. 

"  Make  bright  the  arrows  ! "  said  the  Hebrew  prophet.  In 
this  age,  still  more  in  this  controversy,  every  weapon  must 
think,  every  missile  be  winged  with  intelligence,  every  shell 
be  fused  with  fire  from  God's  altar. 

It  is  with  a  profound  conviction  that  the  event  of  this  war 
is  to  depend  more  upon  the  impregnability  of  principles  than 
that  of  fortresses,  and  that  it  must  be  fought  from  a  higher 
plane  than  any  yet  occupied  by  our  forces  ere  it  can  be 
won,  that  I  offer  the  following  suggestions  and  discussion  to 
the  American  people. 


THE    REJECTEDLST0-KE;': 


I. 

UNION. 

IN  the  popular  mind,  the  brave  sufferings  of  our  past, 
the  fruitions  of  our  present,  and  the  visions  of  our  fu 
ture,  as  a  people,  are  baptized  and  consecrated  in  the 
name  of  UNION.  The  very  word  has  thus  become  a 
talisman,  which,  because  so  long  supposed  to  contain 
all  the  secret  of  our  national  health  and  wealth,  has 
gained  the  command  of  all  the  living  forces  of  the  New 
World.  The  good  and  strong  men  who  have  arraigned 
the  Union  have  done  so  critically,  not  virtually  ;  and 
now,  when  the  question  is  no  longer  on  the  exegesis  of 
Mr.  Hamilton's  or  Mr.  Randolph's  remarks  in  the  Con 
vention  of  '87,  but  on  the  right  of  eminent  domain  in 
this  country,  or  any  portion  of  this  country,  as  between 
Barbarism  and  Civilization,  there  is  but  one  party  pos 
sible  among  loyal  men,  —  that  which  would  preserve 
the  Union. 

But  it  must  be  candidly  acknowledged  in  the  outset, 
that,  in  the  sense  of  the  politicians,  there  is  no  Union 


8  THE   KEJECTED    STONE. 

to  be  preserved.  'T  is  only  a  sad  satire  to  call  States 
"United,"  wherein  that  which  is  felt  011  one  side  to  be 
the  blot  on  the  national  escutcheon  is  maintained  on 
the  other  as  the .  governor  of  the  national  machinery. 
It  is  questionable  whether  the  people  mean,  by  their 
•*eif<}rv  to ,"  save  ftio  TJuion,"  the  same  that  is  meant  by 
some  of  their  proxies.  Do  they  mean  thereby  the  pres 
ervation  of  the  right  at  the  South  to  imprison  Northern 
seamen  and  landsmen,  accused  of  no  crime  ?  Do  our 
half-million  bayonets  gleam  to-day  to  defend  and  pre 
serve  the  right  to  nail  up  Northern  freemen  in  tar- 
barrels  and  roll  them  into  the  Mississippi  River  ?  Is  it, 
in  short,  the  Union  as  it  was,  tliat  the  people  have  with 
one  voice  declared  must  and  shall  be  preserved  ? 

It  is  only  a  short  time  since  compromises  were  pro 
posed  and  seriously  considered  by  the  American  peo 
ple.  They  were  deliberately  rejected,  even  when  the 
manifest  alternative  was  civil  war.  Why  rejected  ? 
Our  people  have  not  been  given  to  scruples  against 
compromise ;  they  had  many  interests  which  civil 
war  would  ruin.  These  compromises  were  rejected, 
and  the  most  unimportant  guaranties  refused,  simply 
because  of  the  utter  worthlessness  of  what  they  were 
to  purchase,  —  i.  e.  the  Union  as  then  existing.  The 
only  promise  offered  in  response  to  Northern  conces 
sion  was,  that  things  just  as  they  were  should  remain 
undisturbed  and  immutable.  But  the  people  of  this 
country  had  maturely  decided  that  the  present  edi 
tion  of  the  country  was  not  worth  stereotyping.  In- 


UNMASK!  9 

deed,  if  it  were  generally  understood  that  the  power 
of  our  Constitution  naturally  results  or  culminates  in 
any  one  condition  of  things  which  the  country  has 
yet  known,  it  is  doubtful  if,  in  the  Free  States,  there 
would  be  found  ten  men  unrighteous  enough  to  save 
it.  In  fact,  as  far  as  the  old  Union  is  concerned,  the 
only  arms  now  defending  it  are  in  the  South;  and 
they  have  reason,  for  it  was  possessed  by  the  demon 
of  the  South,  its  proper  soul  drugged  into  torpor,  sup 
posed  by  many  dead. 


II. 

UNMASK! 

THE  native  glow  of  the  human  heart  is  always  for 
Justice.  Men  have  not  paeans  and  hymns  and  cele 
bration-days  for  epochs  when  Wrong  triumphed  over 
Right.  So  Tyranny  has  found  it  necessary  to  encloud 
the  glow  of  heaven  in  man,  which  would  else  melt 
every  chain. 

There  is  a  legend  of  a  youth  who,  at  a  mas 
querade,  became  interested  to  know  a  certain  mask. 
This  one  he  pursued  everywhere,  the  figure  being 
equally  intent  on  eluding  him.  From  room  to  room, 
from  corridor  to  corridor,  he  followed ;  it  mounted 
i* 


10  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

the  stairway,  his  feet  were  swift  after  it :  at  length, 
in  a  deserted  chamber,  far  away  from  the  music  and 
the  dancing,  he  overtook  and  unmasked  it.with  a  kiss; 
but  what  it  was  that  turned  and  glared  upon  him  he 
could  never  bring  his  pallid  lips  to  utter,  —  only  that 
it  was  a  thing  not  of  flesh  and  blood !  So  have  we 
followed  the  figure  costumed  with  the  stars  and  stripes, 
wearing  the  mask  of  Union.  Far  away  from  the  mu 
sic  and  the  dance,  into  the  deserted  chambers  we  fol 
lowed  with  heedless  infatuation ;  it  is  our  very  kiss 
that  has  unmasked  it.  0  God !  what  monster  has 
been  moving  in  our  midst,  and  touching  our  hands, 
under  this  alluring  costume ! 

Now  we  see  that  this  Union,  whatever  those  who 
made  it  meant  it  should  be,  has  become  the  hollow 
mask  of  SLAVERY. 

The  present  Secretary  of  State,  just  before  entering 
his  office  as  such,  said  to  some  friends  calling  upon 
him,  "  Let  every  man  now  devote  himself  to  saving 
the  Union." — "With  liberty  in  it,"  suggested  one  in 
the  company.  "Liberty  is  always  in  the  Union,"  re 
plied  the  future  Premier.  But  so  soon  as  he  himself 
comes  into  the  Union  with  a  little  finger  of  author 
ity,  held  only  in  the  name  of  Liberty,  that  Union  van 
ishes  like  a  pricked  bubble. 

At  that  recent  period,  no  Union  but  upon  a  slavery 
basis,  pure  and  simple,  was  regarded  as  possible.  Mark 
the  facts. 

Our  Republican  President  himself,  elected  by  a  peo- 


UXMASK!  11 

pie  fondly  dreaming  that  Liberty  might  be  allowed  at 
least  an  occasional  angel's  visit  to  the  White  House, 
pleaded  earnestly  with  the  South  to  remain  in  the 
Union,  on  the  ground  that,  if  the  Union  should  go, 
Slavery  must  go  with  it. 

The  leading  men  of  this  administration  joined  in  the 
warning  and  appeal,  arguing  with  clearness  and  force 
that  the  Union  was  the  only  remaining  fetter  on  four 
millions  of  human  beings. 

"What,"  said  the  Secretary  of  State,  "what  but 
the  obligations  of  the  Constitution  can  prevent  the 
anti-slavery  sentiment  of  this  country  from  assuming 
at  once  the  European  type,  —  direct  emancipation?" 

Coincident  were  the  appeals  of  clerical  Unionists  in 
the  North  to  the  Southern  wings  of  their  churches. 
The  rivets  of  your  slave's  manacle  are  one  with  the 
rivets  of  the  Union  !  "  Separated  from  the  North," 
wrote  Dr.  Hodge  in  the  Princeton  Review,  "  a  South 
ern  Confederacy  of  the  Cotton-growing  States  would  be 
at  the  mercy  of  the  anti-slavery  feeling  of  the  world." 
Dr.  Eliot,  born  and  reared  in  Massachusetts,  minister 
of  the  Unitarian  Church  in  St.  Louis,  implores,  in  the 
name  of  Slavery,  that  Missouri  shall  resist  Disunion  : 
"  Separate  Missouri  from  the  Union,"  he  said,  "  sur 
round  her  with  hostile  Free  States,  and  in  five  years 
the  number  of  those  held  to  involuntary  service  would 
be  exceedingly  small." 

Did  the  American  people  know,  as  they  watched  with 
pride  their  colors  floating  from  the  mast  where  they 


12  THE  EEJECTED   STONE. 

had  nailed  them,  that  those  colors  were  the  only  ones 
on  earth  which  could  still  protect  the  slave-ship  ?  Yet 
it  is  even  so.  England  and  France  stand  able  and  will 
ing  to  prevent  the  slave-trade,  but  the  slave-interest  of 
our  country  has  gained  a  stern  prohibition  of  the  right 
of  searching  our  vessels  ;  and  now  any  pirate  has  only 
to  run  up  the  stars  and  stripes  over  the  smooth  deck  to 
protect  the  horrors  of  the  Middle  Passage  underneath. 
On  the  26th  of  February  last,  Lord  John  Russell  said 
in  the  British  Parliament :  "  This  flag  (the  American) 
has  covered  a  vast  importation  of  slaves.  If  the  Span 
ish  flag  had  been  shown,  our  cruisers  would  at  once 
have  seized  the  vessels  ;  but  as  they  bore  American 
colors,  it  was  impossible  to  do  so." 

Of  every  other  flag  that  floats  under  heaven,  you  may 
be  sure  that  it  does  not  cover  the  traffic  in  human 
beings :  of  thine,  0  Union,  we  cannot  even  yet  say 
whether  it  is  protecting  a  nation's  honor  or  a  world's 
shame  ! 

Think  of  it,  my  masters  ! 

Think  of  America  fitted  out  in  the  order  of  God  as 
the  Life-ship  of  Nations  ;  of  America  with  a  broad  con 
tinent  for  her  deck,  mountain-ribbed  to  match  any 
billows,  launched  forth  to  respond  to  the  signals  that 
come  up  from  voyagers  that  can  struggle  no  longer ;  of 
America,  her  true  captain  chained  below,  turned  aside 
by  mutineers  from  the  perishing  to  whom  she  was  sent, 
flaring  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  the  black  flag  of  the 
slaver ! 


UNMASK!  13 

Reader,  you  know  how  it  is  at  sea  when  the  first  big 
ground-swells  come  :  the  passengers  mutually  disclose 
what  they  have  been  dining  on.  The  Union  is  always 
called  the. Ship  of  State;  and  the  figure  was  never  so 
appropriate  as  now,  when  she  has  got  out  here  amid  the 
swelling  waves  of  the  popular  heart,  the  fresh  gales  of 
Freedom  filling  her  sails  and  snapping  her  flag,  and  all 
the  churches  and  the  parties  seized  with  deadly  sea 
sickness.  There  is  no  doubt  now  what  they  've  all  been 
fattening  on.  The  vomit  is  black.  We  find  that  the 
churches  have  been  retaliating  upon  the  native  Afri 
can's  fondness  for  "  cold  missionary,"  with  an  equal 
devotion  to  pickled  Ethiopian  ;  and  that  the  loaves  and 
fishes  at  Washington  have  invariably  been  eaten  with 
African  sauce. 

Thus,  then,  we  have  overtaken  the  Mask. 

Of  a  truth  we  have  discovered  it  a  thing  not  of  flesh 
and  blood. 

It  is  over  that  Union,  with  its  mask  fallen,  that  a 
raven  hovers  to-day,  with  its  one  word,  —  NEVERMORE. 


14  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

III. 

PILATE. 

VAINLY  has  this  nation  re-enacted  the  part  of  Pilate 
in  his  court.  The  king  sat  with  the  robe  of  power 
about  him,  and  gave  up  Jesus  to  the  mob.  Then  he 
calls  for  a  basin  of  water,  and,  washing  his  hands 
therein,  declares  :  "  I  am  innocent  of  the  blood  of  this 
just  person  ;  see  ye  to  it !  " 

Does  that  absolve  the  man  whose  business  on  that 
throne  is  to  protect  the  innocent  ?  The  verdict  of  the 
world  is  sure  in  the  end  ;  for  fifty  generations  Chris 
tendom  has  gone  on  repeating,  He  suffered  under  Pon 
tius  Pilate. 

So  this  nation,  sitting  on  the  throne  and  surrendering 
Humanity  to  the  tyrant  and  the  pirate,  has  again  and 
again  washed  its  hands  and  proclaimed  its  innocence. 
Relentless  posterity  will  all  the  same  affirm  that  Hu 
manity  suffered  under  the  Pilates  —  Democratic  and 
Republican  —  who  have  ruled  in  the  nation  and  in 
the  States  of  the  nation,  and  will  not  spend  a  thought 
on  the  political  basins  in  which  their  hands  are  washed. 

The  damned  spot  is  in  every  palm ;  there  is  not  water 
enough  in  all  the  rivers  and  lakes  of  America  to  wash 
it  out.  The  time  will  come  when  we  shall  be  eager  to 
pour  in  the  basin  our  heart's  blood,  and  seek  in  that  to 
cleanse  our  hands  of  the  stain  fallen  on  us  from  the 


BETWEEN  US  BE  TRUTH!  15 

sacred  hands  we  have  nailed  and  the  side  we  have 
pierced. 

Henceforth,  brother,  if  we  must  be  devils,  at  least  we 
can  be  honest  devils  ;  and  if  any  craven  priest  or  tricky 
politician  tells  us  that  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
crimes  of  the  Union  against  man,  more  than  with  the 
widow-burning  of  Hindoos,  or  the  cannibalism  of  Fiji- 
ans,  shall  we  not  at  least  tell  him  —  in  a  devout  and 
Christian-like  way  —  that  he  lies  ? 


IV. 

BETWEEN    US    BE    TRUTH! 

WITHOUT  doubt,  the  rule  of  Slavery  in  the  United 
States,  which  began  its  wane  as  the  century  passed  its 
noon,  was  one  legitimate  and  structural  phase  of  the 
country.  It  was  the  result  of  certain  compromises 
made  by  its  builders ;  and  freemen  had  either  to  endure 
it  as  best  they  could,  or,  as  some  of  the  bravest  did, 
take  sides  with  the  stone  which  the  builders  rejected 
against  the  whole  fabric.  But  can  any  man  in  his 
senses  imagine  that  men  fresh  from  a  revolution  for 
Freedom  would  have  stooped  to  that  narrow  gate  and 
straitened  way,  unless  they  had  seen,  or  thought  they 
saw,  the  spacious  halls  of  Liberty  in  the  distance  ? 


16  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

Would  they  then  and  there  have  forever  sealed  the 
doom  of  their  new-born  nation's  independence  ?  Nail 
ing  up  a  Republican  in  a  barrel  and  rolling  him  into 
the  river  would  then  be  only  a  symbol  of  what  our 
fathers  did  for  a  whole  nation  of  Republicans.  Had 
the  Union  been  the  mere  petrifaction  of  its  most  rudi- 
mental  and  unripe  condition,  a  contract  for  the  ever 
lasting  retention  of  its  tottering  infancy,  a  compact 
generating  no  power  of  self-conservation  amid  the  emer 
gencies  of  the  future,  then  the  nation  would  have 
kicked  it  off  as  a  Chinese  shoe,  or  limped  with  prema 
ture  decrepitude  to  pay,  ere  its  minority  had  passed, 
the  debt  of  Nature, —  dissolution.  Everywhere  the  limit 
of  growth  is  the  inauguration  of  death.  But  the 
conservative  principle  in  the  Constitution  was  the  re 
source  of  POWER  which  it  contained.  The  people  ac 
cepted  the  grub  actual  with  the  golden  wings  implied. 
And  now  when  the  period  of  change  has  come,  now 
when  the  chrysalid  throbs  with  the  power  which  for 
bids  it  longer  to  creep,  Slavery  steps  forward,  and  cries, 
"  In  the  Devil's  name,  creep  forever,  or  be  crushed 
forever  !  " 

True,  we  agreed  to  the  worm :  it  was  not  quite 
noble,  but  we  did  it,  and  grievously  have  we  answered 
it ;  —  but  this  through  all  was  our  apology  to  the  hu 
manity  we  consented  to  wrong, —  this  the  one  solace  to 
our  own  hearts  in  their  pain  and  shame  :  "  The  worm 
is  no  common  worm,  but  one  with  an  inherent  power 
and  right  to  climb  to  wings.  For  the  beautiful  day  of 


BETWEEN   US   BE   TRUTH!  17 

its  soaring  and  freedom,  we  will  bear  with  its  present 
meanness  and  devastation." 

There  is  need  that  between  the  star-spangled  banner, 
and  the  stars  with  bars,  a  standard  higher  than  either 
should  be  lifted,  and  on  it  the  ancient  motto  of  the 
Love  that  is  too  great  to  conciliate,  —  BETWEEN  us  BE 
TRUTH. 

When  the  people  of  the  South  consented  to  the  pres 
ent  Constitution,  they  gained  some  immediate  benefits 
for  Slavery,  as  we  have  seen  ;  but  no  less  did  they 
consent  to  the  possible  abrogation  of  every  refuge  and 
cover  under  which  Slavery  was  permitted  to  hide.  Ac 
cepting  that  instrument,  they  consented  not  only  to 
the  election  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  but  to  that  of  Wen 
dell  Phillips,  if  two  thirds  of  the  American  people 
should  so  much  desire  such  a  result  as  to  change  the 
Constitution  so  that  Mr.  Phillips  could  swear  to  sup 
port  it.  South  Carolina,  in  adopting  that  Constitution, 
pledged  her  allegiance  to  a  power  which  could  abolish 
Slavery  throughout  the  land.  For  doing  all  these 
things,  the  Constitution  contains  definite  formulas  and 
methods  in  its  power,  by  a  sufficient  majority,  to  sup 
plant  its  own  provisions.  Who  does  not  know,  unless 
it  be  a  Secessionist,  that  this  power  in  any  constitution 
of  alteration  and  adaptation  is  the  measure  of  its  lease 
of  life  ?  England  has  floated  down  like  an  ark  over 
the  social  deluges  of  centuries,  because  her  constitution 
was  unwritten,  and  able  to  grow  with  the  growing 

2 


18  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

world.  "  England,"  said  Brougham,  "  has  survived  be 
cause  she  knew  when  to  bend." 

In  its  susceptibility  of  amendment,  the  Constitution 
recognizes  the  Higher  Law,  —  the  only  law  that  never 
fails  to  be  executed. 

An  ancient  code  provided  the  penalty  of  death  for 
any  one  who  should  propose  any  alteration  of  its  pro 
visions  ;  the  proposer  should  die,  even  though  his  alter 
ation  should  be  adopted.  And  yet  proposers  came,  and 
their  dying  breath  winnowed  that  code  in  every  partic 
ular.  Our  Constitution  contains  no  such  bloody  bar 
rier  to  its  improvement,  though  the  Apollyon  of  Lynch- 
Law  has  sought  to  extemporize  one  even  in  the  Senate- 
chamber.  Whilst  wisely  securing  thoroughness  in  every 
radical  change,  by  demanding  a  majority  large  enough 
to  place  such  change  beyond  suspicion  of  accident  or 
caprice,  our  fathers  left  a  door-way  for  the  higher  laws 
which  higher  civilization  must  from  age  to  age  enact. 
Had  there  been  no  such  door-way,  the  walls  would  have 
been  long  ago  battered  in  under  the  steady  siege  of 
Civilization. 

Observe,  then,  men  and  brethren  !  that,  in  forming 
this  government,  Slavery  clutched  at  the  strength  of 
the  hour  ;  Freedom  relied  on  the  inviolable  justice  of 
the  ages.  They  have  both  had,  they  must  have,  their 
reward.  That  it  was  and  is  thus  is  apparent  from  the 
very  clauses  under  which  Slavery  claims  eminent  do 
main  in  this  country  ;  they  are  all  written  as  for  an 
institution  passing  away ;  the  sources  of  it  are  sealed 


THE   ORGANIC   LAW.  19 

up  so  far  as  they  could  be  ;  and  all  the  provisions  for 
it  —  the  crutches  by  which  it  should  limp  as  decently 
as  possible  to  its  grave  —  were  so  worded  that,  when 
Slavery  should  be  buried,  no  dead  letter  would  stand 
in  the  Constitution  as  its  epitaph.  It  is  even  so.  No 
historian,  a  thousand  years  hence,  could  show  from 
that  instrument  that  a  single  slave  was  ever  held  un 
der  it. 


V. 

THE    ORGANIC    LAW. 

WHEN  the  Secretary  of  State  said,  Liberty  is  always 
in  the  Union,  it  was  a  truth  in  the  guise  of  indirec 
tion.  But  let  us  not  be  misled  into  supposing  the 
Constitution  to  be  the  fortress  of  freedom,  apart  from 
those  who  occupy  it ;  except  for  the  equal  right  of 
occupation  by  the  portal  of  the  ballot  which  it  gives 
to  the  friends  of  freedom,  its  every  gun  can  be 
wheeled  around  against  Liberty  with  much  more  ease 
than  against  Slavery.  If  the  present  agitation  should 
do  no  more  than  bring  about  a  free  and  frank  dis 
cussion  of  our  organic  law,  and  suggest  the  exigeant 
demand  for  its  improvement,  it  will  be  worth  more 
than  it  has  yet  cost  us,  or  is  likely  to.  There  has 
existed  heretofore  a  popular  delusion  that  the  abso- 


20  THE    REJECTED    STOXE. 

lute  and  divine  right  of  kings  has  in  America  been 
simply  transferred  to  a  paper  king;  that  the  Consti 
tution  is  an  inspired  document,  dealing  with  every 
interest  of  its  own  or  our  or  any  time  with  exhaust 
ive  generalization.  "  Who  can  tell,"  said  Cicero,  "  but 
that  the  people  may  come  to  believe  that  these  stones 
and  pictures  are  the  gods  themselves."  Just  that 
came  to  pass.  So  the  provisions  of  our  Constitution, 
which  our  fathers  themselves  acknowledged  as  neces 
sarily  partial,  and  in  many  regards  temporizing,  are 
confused  by  the  majority  of  our  people  with  absolute 
laws,  and  worshipped  accordingly. 

But,  outside  of  mythologies,  Minervas  in  full  armor 
do  not  spring  from  the  skulls  even  of  Joves  (and  in 
the  remote  antiquity  of  our  origin  —  some  sixty  or 
seventy  years  back  —  all  American  statesmen  become 
Joves) . 

History  and  society  repeat  nothing  more  constantly 
than  the  maxim  of  natural  science,  Nihil  per  saltum. 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  has  been  called  a 
series  of  "  glittering  generalities " :  low  as  was  the 
spirit  in  which  this  phrase  was  uttered,  it  is  certainly 
true  in  a  most  important  sense.  That  Declaration 
was  a  study  of  the  millennium,  and  that  docs  not 
bloom  on  the  sapling  of  one  revolution,  nor  of  a  thou 
sand.  Human  brotherhood  is  in  it ;  the  instruments 
are  scarcely  invented  —  surely  not  tuned  —  to  render 
that  symphony.  The  men  who  announced  those  au 
roral  theories  of  human  rights  went  home  to  buy 


THE   ORGANIC   LAW.  21 

and  sell  their  human  chattels  as  before.  The  French 
proverb  says,  "  When  the  saint's  day  is  over,  farewell 
the  saint.''  The  signers  of  that  Declaration  did  but 
make  us  a  saint's  day ;  and  it  is  to  our  credit  that  we 
rejoice  in  it  more  than  in  all  the  days  whose  transac 
tions  became  the  rafters  of  the  house  we  live  in. 

It  was  a  "  pattern  shown  in  the  mount,"  after  which 
all  things  in  the  plain  below  were  to  be  fashioned ; 
but  no  sooner  have  the  tables  of  the  law  been  given, 
and  the  lightnings  of  revolution  amid  which  they  were 
announced  sheathed,  than  the  prosaic  exigencies  of  the 
hour  asserted  their  qualifying  clauses.  God  is  great ; 
Moses  can  approach  him :  a  golden  calf  is  more  com 
prehensible  to  the  multitude. 

So  the  fiery  Declaration  cooled  down  to  the  wise 
and  wary  Constitution. 

It  is  a  maxim  of  natural  science  that  things  move 
violently  out  of  their  places,  calmly  in  them.  Omi 
nous  warnings  are  found  in  Washington's  Farewell 
Address ;  and  our  earliest  state  papers  show  that  fears 
of  a  divorce  were  expressed  at  the  marriage  altar; 
which  indicate  that  the  equilibrium  of  elements  was 
even  then  felt  to  be  imperfect.  Under  the  increasing 
agitations,  the  popular  mind  has  been  so  Union-besotted, 
that  it  has  gone  blindly  deeper  and  deeper  into  the 
danger  it  meant  to  avoid  by  clinging  to  the  Union. 
As  an  Ideal,  we  should  have  been  guided  by  it  to  a 
solid  shore:  as  an  Idol,  we  have  drifted  with  it  on 
the  breakers. 

2* 


22  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

We  may  well  ponder  agitations  which  report  things 
out  of  their  places.  For  example,  Democracy  is  the 
people  governing  themselves,  —  that  is,  making  their 
own  institutions.  But  the  provision  for  the  rendition 
of  fugitives  binds  upon  the  citizens  of  Free  States, 
to  a  certain  extent,  an  institution  they  have  abro 
gated.  It  is  like  forcing  a  horse  to  live  upon  fish. 
Then,  again,  Democracy  must  have  equal  rights  as 
an  atmospheric  condition.  But  by  the  constitutional 
basis  of  representation,  the  vote  of  a  large  slaveholder 
may  balance  that  of  two  or  three  blocks  of  a  Northern 
city. 

These  elements,  and  one  or  two  more  that  might  be 
named,  are  out  of  their  places  in  a  Republic  ;  and  much 
of  the  agitation  of  recent  years  may  be  attributed  to  the 
effort  of  the  newly  awakened  forces  of  the  New  World 
to  classify  themselves  more  naturally.  But  let  us  not 
be  misunderstood  here.  The  political  situation  of  the 
parties  to  the  present  war  does  not  depend  in  the  slight 
est  degree  upon  any  defects  in  the  Constitution.  The 
North  goes  to  the  battle-field  with  a  record  of  constitu 
tional  obedience  clearer  than  some  of  her  best  friends 
could  wish  it.  She  has  bowed  her  back  to  the  heaviest 
burdens  that  could  be  constitutionally  imposed  upon 
her.  She  has  been  put  to  shame  in  her  own  gates, 
through  long,  weary  years,  and  consented  to  toil  on 
toward  her  day  of  deliverance  by  the  slow,  prescribed 
paths.  Fulfilling  the  hard  legal  conditions,  Freedom 
had  climbed  the  hill  Difficulty  raised  in  her  path  by 


THE   ORGANIC   LAW.  23 

the  Constitution  itself,  and  was  near  to  the  gates  of  the 
beautiful  palace  Success,  when  Apollyon,  mad  with  envy 
and  hate,  broke  through  his  own  limits,  and  prepared 
his  darts  at  the  very  door  of  the  chamber  named  Peace. 
The  constitutional  disparagements  of  Liberty  have  in 
deed  roused  Liberty  to  higher  exertions ;  she  has  been 
more  in  earnest  than  if  a  freeman's  vote  had  been  equal 
to  a  slaveholder's ;  the  shame  of  repelling  the  fugitive 
from  her  door  has  nerved  her  to  the  atonement  she  is 
now  ready  to  make  by  the  shedding  of  blood ;  but  there 
has  been  no  evasion,  —  no  overleaping  of  conditions, — 
no  cutting  of  knots  she  had  agreed  to  untie.  Boston 
saw  the  skeleton  of  George  III.  exhumed,  bone  refitted 
to  bone,  and  the  grinning  skull  crowned  in  her  Court- 
House, —  this  so  often  as  she  surrendered  her  fellow- 
citizens  to  slavery.  Cincinnati  saw  the  Tour  de  Nesle 
rebuilt.  Ohio,  under  a  Republican  Governor,  held  the 
clothes  of  those  who  stoned  Margaret  Garner  and  her 
children  to  death,  and  said,  "  Her  blood  be  upon  us 
and  our  children." 

No  !  Slavery  now  appeals  to  arms,  because  Freedom, 
in  her  slow  but  steady  progress,  has  left  no  informality 
—  no  flaw  —  which  can  be  seized  on  to  reverse  the 
decision  she  has  gained  in  any  higher  court. 


24  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

VI. 

THE    EEJECTED    STONE. 

IT  is  the  inestimable  gain  of  our  present  condition, 
that  we  have  come  to  perceive  a  weak  point  in  our 
organic  law,  —  a  stone  left  out,  and  that  a  fundamental 
one. 

A  disease  in  any  body  always  flies  to  the  weakest 
point  of  that  body,  and  thus  proves  what  is  its  weakest 
point. 

Chase  the  fox,  and  it  will  show  you  the  hole  in  your 
wall. 

On  either  theory  of  the  Constitution,  that  which  binds 
it  back  forever  to  the  shell  it  is  ready  to  cast,  or  that 
which  empowers  it  to  struggle  up  with  the  struggling 
world,  —  conserving  its  principle  of  life  in  its  principle 
of  growth,  —  our  nation's  present  emergency  brings  the 
whole  country  to  the  stone  which  the  builders  rejected, 
announcing  the  irreversible  decree  that  either  we  must 
be  wrecked  upon  that  stone,  or  else  that  it  must  be 
taken  as  the  Head  of  the  Corner. 

That  stone  is,  essentially,  JUSTICE. 

The  form  in  which  it  stands  for  us  is  THE  AFRICAN 
SLAVE. 

The  ethnologic  African  is  nothing  to  us  here,  nor  his 
place  in  the  scale,  nor  yet  his  capacity  ;  our  fact  lies  in 
this,  that  he  is  inevitably  the  Third  Party  in  any  con- 


THE   REJECTED    STONE.  25 

tract  that  can  be  made  between  the  North  and  the 
South.  He  must  be  presently  recognized  as  a  party  to 
the  contract,  who  has  already  demonstrated  his  power  to 
tear  it  in  pieces.  We  have  already  had  our  experience, 
and  if  we  do  not  profit  by  it,  'tis  our  own  loss.  Men 
who  leap  from  precipices  do  not  imperil  the  law  of 
gravitation.  Obey  the  truth,  and  it  comes  a  life-giving 
sunbeam  out  of  heaven  ;  disobey,  and  it  comes  all  the 
same,  but  now  a  deadly  sun-stroke. 

When  our  national  firm  was  consolidated,  the  Afri 
can's  name  was  left  off  of  the  sign,  as  his  right  was  left 
out  of  the  compact ;  but  every  year  has  shown  his  in 
creasing  power  in  that  firm.  It  is  plain  he  can  be  no 
longer  considered  even  a  silent  partner.  The  thunder 
of  his  voice  mutters  under  every  home  in  the  South  to 
day.  They  who  hear  it  turn  pale,  and  say :  "  Your 
nation  is  nothing  and  worse  than  nothing  to  us,  unless 
it  resolve  itself  into  a  Police  Force  for  the  protection  of 
Slavery  ;  so  soon  as  the  Monster  is  denied  its  daily 
virgin,  it  turns  to  crush  us." 

Fearful  is  their  sincerity !  What  they  say  is  credible, 
as  the  last  words  of  the  dying  !  Unless  the  organic  law 
is  so  amended  as  to  nationalize  the  code  of  Slavery,  to 
adopt  and  foster  the  institution,  the  South  feels  herself 
to  be,  and  is,  in  the  midst  of  advancing  society,  like  the 
prisoner  of  the  Inquisition  amidst  the  ever-encroaching 
walls  of  his  dungeon,  who  could  compute  the  minute 
when  they  must  crush  him  between  them. 

And   to   the  North   the  warning  of  the  African  is 


26  THE  EEJECTED   STONE. 

equally  imperative.  The  North  has  walked  behind  to 
strengthen  those  who  shot  their  arrows  at  him,  hut  has 
found  that  every  arrow  was  from  a  Tartar  bow ;  it  has 
returned  from  its  flight  to  plunge  into  those  who 
thought  to  find  security  in  the  rear.  The  North  has, 
in  these  last  years,  become  a  funeral  procession  follow 
ing  the  hearses  on  which  lie  a  fallen  Literature,  a 
tainted  Ermine,  a  putrid  Church.  On  the  scholars  and 
the  orators  Slavery  has  brought  the  plague  of  the  Black 
Tongue. 

The  Devil's  Year  draws  to  a  close  ;  bring  out  the 
ledgers  !  See,  for  every  man  bought  and  sold  in  the 
South,  one  was  bought  and  sold  in  the  North  ! 

It  is  simply  useless  to  accuse  the  builders  on  account 
of  their  rejection  of  this  stone  ;  it  was  too  large  for 
them  to  lift.  Have  we  not  been  dismayed  by  it,  have 
we  not  from  year  to  year  shrank  from  it  also  ?  The 
exigencies  of  a  new  and  infant  nation,  requiring  before 
anything  else  the  necessities  of  national  life  and  defence, 
forbade  the  adjustment  of  any  such  question.  The  true 
reason  why  this  work  was  adjourned  to  us  is  its  com 
manding  extent  and  grandeur.  For  those  who  see  in 
this  problem  a  question  of  the  Negro  race,  its  power  or 
weakness,  can  do  little  more  than  bear  a  hod  for  the 
edifice  that  is  to  rise  upon  this  Head  of  the  Corner. 

Ages  of  Wrong  have,  like  cold,  hard  glaciers,  graven 
on  this  lowly  stone  the  sacred  signs  of  the  Laws  that 
cannot  be  broken ;  now  he  stands  in  our  midst  the 
touchstone  of  every  virtue. 


THE  REJECTED   STONE.  27 

There  is  a  print  as  of  nails  in  his  hands,  and  a  hollow 
wound  in  his  side  ;  and  though  as  a  sheep  before  his 
shearers  he  is  dumb,  a  voice  comes  from  behind  him, 
saying,  "  What  for  this  least  one  of  my  brothers  you  do 
or  do  not,  you  do  or  do  not  for  me." 

The  Slavery  Question  is  to  take  many  years  yet,  for 
it  involves  the  most  transcendent  laws  that  enfold  the 
earth,  —  eternal  laws  of  justice  and  humanity  which 
have  not  yet  risen,  but  have  only  lit  up  the  morning- 
stars  which  sing  of  a  new  creation.  That  sneer  so 
lately  heard  on  the  street  about  u  the  eternal  nigger," 
is  not  without  its  significance  ;  to  America  he  has  been 
and  must  continue  to  be  eternal,  —  even  if  his  race 
should  perish  from  the  planet.  Our  relations  to  the 
Negro  make  him  for  us  the  sign  of  eternal  justice  and 
inviolable  honor.  The  gift  derives  its  sacredness  from 
the  altar.  The  more  lowly  and  incompetent  that  race, 
the  more  sacred  its  cause  to  all  loyal  men.  His  plea 
the  Negro  can  only  utter  by  the  tongue  or  pen  of  other 
races  ;  but  his  silence  is  more  eloquent  than  any  tongue 
or  pen.  He  is  absent  from  our  pews,  he  is  unfit  for  our 
parlors  ;  but  his  absence  bears  a  more  withering  rebuke 
to  the  wrong  that  has  held  him  down  in  the  ascending 
world,  than  his  presence.  He  can  only  sign  his  plea 
with  his  cross-mark ;  but  it  is  the  indictment  of  human 
ity  itself  against  us,  and  that  sign  of  the  cross  affixed 
is  the  double  seal  of  his  ignorance  and  of  the  inhuman 
ity  which  has  caused  it.  Thus  the  black  man  with 
draws  before  the  universality  of  his  issue,  which  becomes 


28  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

that  between  Absolute  Right  and  Wrong ;  the  verdict 
he  claims  is  the  verdict  of  Man  as  against  the  oppression 
of  a  Class. 

Even  if  we  cannot  all  see  that  his  issue  is  that  of  the 
whole  world,  we  have  surely  found  that  it  is  that  of 
every  race  comprised  in  America.  In  our  grief,  we  re 
member  the  warning  of  Lamartine,  that  "  man  never 
puts  a  chain  about  his  brother's  neck,  but  God  is  sure 
to  put  the  other  end  of  it  around  his  own."  In  our 
first  revolution  we  saw  that  the  right  to  take  one  pound 
implied  the  right  to  take  a  thousand  ;  we  have  required 
another  to  reveal  that  the  right  to  enslave  four  millions 
implies  the  right  to  enslave  thirty.  Again  and  again 
we  have  shoved  aside  the  importunate,  widowed  Africa, 
who  came  with  shackled  hand  uplifted  in  petition  ;  and 
now  that  she  trouble th  us,  we  may  avenge  her.  Her 
cause  has  become  our  own. 

Therefore  we  would  avenge  her  ;  but  would  we  do 
her  justice  ? 

At  this  moment  we  are  inviting  the  thunderbolt  of 
subjugation  by  separating  our  own  issue  in  the  war 
from  that  of  the  African  as  far  as  possible.  This  day, 
were  our  part  of  this  difficulty  settled,  by  the  rebels 
grounding  their  arms,  there  would  be  no  difficulty,  as 
far  as  our  rulers  are  concerned,  in  consolidating  the 
Union  over  the  prostrate  form  of  the  negro. 

But  the  rebels  have  no  thought  of  grounding  their 
arms ;  nor  will  they,  until  they  see  flashing  in  the  sun 
light  a  certain  sword  which  yet  sleeps  in  its  scabbard. 


CONSERVATION.  29 

And  it  may  be  long  yet  before  that  sword  is  unsheathed. 
For  to  do  justice  to  the  Negro,  is  to  lay  the  corner-stone 
of  the  Republic  of  Man.  It  is  nothing  less.  Therefore 
this  crisis  is  the  most  solemn  hour  that  Eternity  has 
dialled  on  Time ;  and  ages  past  and  coming  meet  here, 
and  stand  unveiled  and  expectant. 


VII. 

CONSERVATION. 

THE  preservation  of  the  Union,  which  is  the  task 
now  assigned  the  American  people,  and  of  which,  for 
tunately,  the  evasion  is  harder  than  the  accomplish 
ment,  must  necessarily  at  first  take  the  form  of  disin 
tegration.  With  destruction  all  life  begins.  The  birth 
of  the  germ  is  the  death  of  the  seed.  The  Union  is 
under  compulsion  to  find  its  life  by  losing  it.  When 
the  sides  of  a  seed-shell  have  fallen  apart,  sundered  by 
the  springing  germ,  vainly  shall  you  endeavor  to  rivet 
them  together  again  and  remake  the  old  seed  ;  they  can 
be  reunited  only  by  becoming  loam  for  the  new  form  to 
which  they  have  given  birth.  Every  form,  in  any  king 
dom  of  Nature,  contains  the  necessity  of  its  decay  as  a 
form,  in  the  germ  of  its  perpetuity  as  an  essence. 

This  is  a  key  to  the  startling  evolutions  which  have 
3 


30  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

so  befogged  the  empirics,  and  before  which  the  donkeys 
have  not  yet  found  presence  of  mind  enough  to  bray. 
How  is  it  that  under  the  banner  which  is  inscribed 
"  Save  the  Union "  are  suddenly  found  the  leaders 
whose  lives  have  been  consecrated  to  the  destruction 
of  the  Union  in  the  interest  of  Freedom  ?  Mr.  Everett 
does  not  yet  comprehend  his  strange  proximity  to  Mr. 
Phillips ;  and  the  New  York  Herald  is  dumfounded  at 
finding  itself  under  the  same  flag  with  the  Anti-Slavery 
Standard.  It  is  because  until  now  the  phrase  "  saving 
the  Union"  was  the  scarecrow  of  cowardice;  now  'tis 
the  watchword  of  heroism.  It  meant  last  year  the  fatal 
policy  of  fostering  the  ulcer  that  was  eating  out  the  life 
of  the  real  Union  ;  to-day  it  means  to  lay  the  foundation 
of  a  nation  that  shall  be  permanent,  because  founded  on 
the  rock  of  justice. 

The  Soul  of  Nature  has  given  one  wave  of  its  wand 
over  this  land ;  and,  in  the  presence  of  this  Prospero, 
the  semi-brute  Caliban  and  the  winged  Ariel  start  forth 
upon  one  service.  All  around  us  are  the  treacherous 
Calibans  growling  over  the  work  they  are  forced  to  do, 
stung  and  maddened  by  the  Ariels  who  sweep  on  with 
joy  to  the  loyal  task  whose  fulfilment  marks  the  day  of 
their  own  liberation  also. 

Do  we  realize  the  straits  and  sorrows  to  which  a  large 
class  of  our  fellow-citizens  are  reduced  ?  I  refer  to  the 
large  and  much  respected  class  of  Sitters  on  the  Fence. 

These  have  come  to  grief.  "  Sitting  on  the  fence," 
once  the  symbol  of  earthly  ease  and  repose,  has  now 
become  the  most  distressing  of  attitudes. 


COMPROMISE.  31 

Constant  abrasions  on  each  side  have  made  the  Fence 
so  sharp,  that  one  who  sits  on  it  is  in  imminent  danger 
of  being  cut  in  two. 

In  the  South,  if  any  one  attempts  to  sit  on  it,  he  is 
compelled  to  ride  for  eternity  upon  its  top-rail :  in  the 
North,  owing  to  the  recent  employment  of  a  distingiiished 
maker  of  rails  to  repair  the  Fence,  and  the  consequent 
shaking,  any  repose  thereon  is  impossible  to  any  poli 
tician  less  skilful  than  M.  Blondin. 

Virginia  tried  to  sit  there,  and  fell,  breaking  a  good 
many  bones ;  Kentucky  tried  it,  and  was  barely  rescued. 


VIII. 

COMPROMISE. 

THE  agitation  of  the  South  in  awaking  from  the  stu 
por  into  which  the  Black  Drug  threw  her,  when  new 
markets  raised  the  price  of  slaves,  learning  now,  for 
the  first  time  since  she  signed  the  Compact,  the  nature 
and  extent  of  that  power  wherewith  it  has  all  along 
been  in  gestation,  is  most  natural. 

The  instinct  of  Slavery  is  wiser  than  the  consciousness 
of  the  Republican  party,  which  is  so  eager  to  deny  any 
dissatisfaction  with  Slavery  where  it  exists,  —  opposing 
it  only  where  it  does  n't  exist. 


32  THE  REJECTED   STOXE. 

The  naturalists  tell  us  that  every  animal  knows  by 
instinct,  and  at  first  sight,  the  animal  that  naturally 
preys  upon  it.  The  mouse  just  born,  which  has  never 
seen  any  animal,  will  show  every  sign  of  terror  at  sight 
of  a  cat,  whilst  calm  enough  before  other  animals. 
The  instinct  of  the  Southern  Mouse  tells  true  when  it 
recognizes  that  Freedom  never  yet  rested  —  never  can 
rest  —  quiet  with  its  eye  upon  a  slave. 

It  is  very  plain  that  if,  in  ten  years,  had  the  normal 
progress  of  the  country  continued,  two  thirds  of  the 
people  had  been  found  determined  on  taking  advantage 
of  their  constitutional  authority  to  abolish  Slavery,  such 
a  result  would  not  have  been  outside  of  the  ratio  in 
which  the  anti-slavery  sentiment  has  increased  since 
Hale  and  Julian,  twelve  years  ago,  received  less  than 
two  hundred  thousand  votes  on  the  platform  that  now 
rules  in  the  Capitol. 

Slavery,  with  the  keen  sense  of  the  savage,  lays  its  ear 
to  the  ground,  and  hears  in  those  ballots  falling  for 
Abraham  Lincoln  the  fatal  tramp  of  many  centuries, 
the  mustering  for  liberty  of  the  ages  that  take  no  step 
backward  ;  it  does  not  pause  even  to  listen  to  the  pro 
testations  of  Freedom's  picket-guard,  that  her  grand 
army  will  never  invade  the  sacred  soil  of  Constitutional 
Oppression ;  cares  not  to  inquire  whether  they  are  hon 
est,  or  otherwise  ;  knows  better ;  prepares  to  defend  every 
inch  of  its  bloody  deck,  every  fetter  in  its  coffle.  Thank 
God  for  that  savage  instinct  which,  when  as  yet  there 
was  no  North,  saved  us  from  the  deadly  evils  that 


COMPROMISE.  33 

spring  from  the  making  of  promises  that  Fate  must 
forever  forbid  us  to  keep ! 

The  Republican  party  was  doubtless  sincere  in  its 
eager  denial  of  any  intent  to  interfere  with  Slavery  in 
the  States,  even  through  legal  and  constitutional  formu 
las  ;  for  even  our  President  consented,  in  his  inaugural, 
to  offer  this  filthy  coin,  slipped  by  Seward  into  his  hand, 
to  purchase  a  Union,  when  the  very  fact  of  its  having 
to  be  purchased,  even  with  a  half-dime,  would  prove  it 
already  gone. 

The  Power  which  controls  the  country  and  the  world 
—  the  Power  which  has  put  forth  ten  thousand  parties 
like  summer-leaves,  and  shed  them  when  their  autumn 
came,  itself  remaining  rooted  and  fixed  in  the  stratum 
that  changes  not  —  has  already  exculpated  the  Repub 
lican  party  from  any  suspicion  of  ulterior  intent,  by 
raising  up  a  nobler  one  to  take  its  place.  At  a  little 
town  in  Ohio,  where  they  had  two  poles  with  party-flags 
flying  from  them,  the  people,  when  they  heard  the  boom 
of  a  shot  falling  in  Fort  Sumter,  went  to  the  Common, 
cut  down  the  two  poles,  tore  away  the  flags,  spliced  the 
poles  into  one,  which  they  raised  with  ONE  flag  on  it. 
This  is  a  symbol  of  a  process  which,  somewhat  slower, 
but  rapidly  enough,  has  been  for  some  months  going  on 
with  the  parties  ;  the  electric  power  of  patriotism  is 
bringing  from  each  some  contribution  to  the  forces  of 
Liberty.  The  Republican  party  needed  this  solvent,  as 
well  as  others.  It  was  no  sooner  in  power  than  it 
3* 


34  THE  KEJECTED   STONE. 

began  to  go  the  way  of  all  parties.     Hear  a  parable 
thereof. 

There  was  a  young  man,  as  the  story  runs,  whose 
mistress  was  extremely  ill ;  anxious  and  distressed,  he 
went  forth  to  seek  a  physician  able  to  cure  her.  On  the 
way  he  was  offered,  and  purchased  at  a  large  price,  a 
talisman  which  had  the  magic  quality  of  revealing  to  its 
possessor  all  disembodied  spirits.  With  this  he  ap 
proached  the  doors  of  the  most  distinguished  physicians 
of  Paris.  All  above  and  about  their  doors  he  saw,  by 
the  aid  of  his  talisman,  the  ghosts  of  those  who  had 
departed  this  life  under  their  practice.  Spirits  with 
pill-boxes,  spirits  with  syringes,  and  lancets,  and  wet 
sheets,  all  spurted,  and  cut  at,  and  sought  to  douse  the 
unconscious  doctors,  whenever  they  appeared  at  their 
doors.  Presently  the  young  man,  after  wandering  in 
despair  from  door  to  door  of  the  celebrities,  paused 
before  that  of  a  physician  over  which  he  saw  two  — 
only  two  —  very  mild-seeming  spirits.  The  contrast 
with  the  doors  of  other  doctors  pleased  him.  "  Here," 
he  said,  "  must  be  an  able  physician  ;  only  two  have 
died  under  his  charge,  and  they  may  have  been  too  far 
gone  before  he  was  called  in."  The  young  man  entered, 
and  told  his  fear  and  distress  : '"  0,  sir,"  he  cried,  "  my 
only  hope  is  in  you  !  "  "  And  why,"  asked  the  happy 
doctor,  "  do  you  trust  in  me  ?  "  "  Ah,"  replied  the 
youth,  unwilling  to  mention  his  talisman,  "  have  I  not 
heard  your  reputation  for  success  in  difficult  cases 
bruited  throughout  the  city  ?  "  "  Good  heavens  !  " 


COMPROMISE.  35 

exclaimed  the  astounded  doctor,  "  my  reputation  ! 
Why,  I  have  not  been  in  Paris  but  eight  days,  and 
never  had  but  two  patients  in  my  life  !  "  The  young 
man  remembered  the  two  he  had  seen  over  the  door, 
and  rushed  from  the  room  in  despair. 

No  wonder  the  country  hurried  away  from  such  spirit- 
haunted  doors  as  those  of  Dr.  Democrat,  Dr.  Whig,  and 
Dr.  Knownothing.  But  over  Dr.  Republican's  door 
there  was  a  ghost  before  he  had  been  in  Washington  a 
week,  and  he  never  had  but  one  patient  in  his  life.  He 
inaugurated  his  practice  in  that  city  by  proposing  to 
the  States  to  adopt,  as  a  part  of  the  Constitution,  the 
most  essentially  unrepublican  feature  that  could  be  in 
serted  in  any  organic  code,  namely,  a  fetter  binding  the 
people  forever  from  any  alteration  of  their  Constitution 
as  it  concerns  Slavery  in  the  States.  Jeff.  Davis  will 
never  give  this  nation  so  deadly  a  stab  as  would  the 
adoption  of  that  provision  by  the  people.  In  twenty- 
five  years  the  very  swords  which  now  defend  the  Union 
would  be  turned  toward  its  heart. 

If  Compromise  —  that  old  serpent  ever  coiling  about 
the  tree  of  life  —  has  been  baffled  this  time,  it  is  not 
because  the  party  in  power  did  not  yield  to  his  seduc 
tions.  Enough  secret  correspondence  went  on  at  Wash 
ington,  which  it  will  for  a  long  time  be  "  incompatible 
with  public  (i.  e.  Cabinet)  interest "  to  publish.  (Alas  ! 
we  need  it  not;  the  "  Campbell  and  Seward  Letters" 
are  already  too  much  !)  It  now  appears  that  the  ser 
pent  only  desired  time  to  wound  our  heel ;  four  months 


36  THE  REJECTED   STOKE. 

he  got,  against  the  protest  of  the  nation,  and  planted 
his  fang  just  where  he  aimed. 

A  compromise  with  the  South  has  now  been  shown 
as  impossible  as  a  compact  with  a  maniac.  It  is  all  the 
more  so  when  the  maniac  has  a  method  in  his  madness, 
and  a  sufficient  reason  for  it. 

Are  men  fit  to  lead  and  rule  the  forces  now  roused 
into  action  in  this  country,  who  talk  of  "  this  wanton 
and  unnecessary  rebellion  "  ?  Stupid  ! 

There  never  was  a  more  religiously  earnest,  deliber 
ate,  consistent,  and  necessary  rebellion.  Is  it  not  as 
much  the  nature  and  mission  of  the  thorns  to  spring  up 
and  choke  the  good  seed  sown  in  their  midst,  as  it  is 
the  nature  and  mission  of  the  honest  soil  to  bring  forth 
thirty,  sixty,  or  an  hundred  fold  ?  Slavery  has  never 
departed  from  its  normal  development ;  its  exaspera 
tion  is  the  legitimated  result  of  the  exasperation  of 
Freedom.  It  is  always  the  sun  itself  that  calls  up  the 
cloud  that  would  obscure  it. 

"  The  South  has  been  told  lies  about  us,  and  our 
designs."  Not  at  all.  The  South  understands  us  bet 
ter  than  we  do  ourselves.  They  see  that  politicians 
have  not  awakened  the  forces  that  have  made  them, 
and  cannot  put  them  to  sleep  as  they  will.  They  have 
seen  a  man  with  a  price  set  on  his  head  setting  up  his 
Liberator  in  an  attic  with  a  Negro  boy  to  help  him,  — 
now  dipping  his  pen  to  announce  the  decapitation  of 
Slavery  under  the  guillotine  erected  by  himself.  They 
have  seen  millions  kneel  and  weep  at  the  uplifted  scaf- 


COMPROMISE.  37 

fold  of  a  man  who  struck  at  the  heart  of  Slavery,  and 
knew  better  than  the  cautious  Secretary  who  said  that 
the  hero  was  "justly  hung,"  that,  the  restraints  re 
moved,  they  would  have  seen  then  what  they  saw  a 
week  ago,  —  twenty  thousand  freemen  gathered  on  the 
spot  where  John  Brown  died,  and  singing, 

"  May  Heaven's  smile  look  kindly  down 
Upon  the  grave  of  old  John  Brown  ! " 

Already  they  heard  the  cartrnen  and  boatmen  of  New 
York  and  Boston  singing  to  the  ring  of  steel, 

"John  Brown's  knapsack  is  strapped  upon  his  back, 

Hallelujah ! 
His  soul 's  marching  on ! " 

They  counted  each  new  face  which  came  to  the  Senate 
or  the  House  to  stand  for  a  principle  which  a  few  years 
since  it  was  a  disgrace,  or  worse,  to  whisper  ;  until 
from  the  Illinois  grave  of  Lovejoy  the  conviction  for 
which  he  died  was  called  by  two  millions  of  men,  and 
lifted  as  the  standard  of  the  nation. 

They  have  watched,  step  by  step,  the  steady,  un- 
impulsive  progress  by  which  the  people  of  America, 
against  all  the  interests  so  often  controlling,  —  the 
mercantile  interest,  the  Church  interest,  the  political 
interest,  the  prayer  of  Peace, — marched  forward  from 
year  to  year  to  the  music  of  Liberty.  They  looked 
straight  into  the  eye  of  Destiny,  and  saw  that  the 
time  must  surely  come  when  the  free  tongue  of  the 
Ballot  would  be  touched  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar 


38  THE  EEJECTED   STOXE. 

of  the  American  heart,  and,  though  over  a  devastated 
land,  would  at  length  thunder  to  the  world  the  law  of 
Freedom  and  Humanity. 

They  knew  that  Humanity's  eyes  are  in  its  forehead, 
not  its  occiput ;  that  revolutions  go  not  backward. 

The  South  was  right,  en'tirely  right,  in  seeing  that 
the  election  of  Lincoln  was  the  signing  of  the  death- 
warrant  of  Slavery  in  the  Union.  It  is  no  use  smooth 
ing  matters  to  the  patient  who  feels  the  hectic  spot 
burning  on  the  cheek.  No  doubt  this  first  Republi 
can  Administration  would  have  been  more  tender  with 
Slavery  than  others ;  so  do  we  humor  and  indulge  to 
the  top  of  their  bent  those  whose  graves  are  near. 

But  in  the  day  when  the  Nation  decided  for  the 
principle  that  Slavery  had  a  right  to  be  treated  only 
as  local  property,  and  then  with  no  more  favor  than 
other  property,  it  touched  the  seat  of  life. 

Slave  property  does  not  rest  on  the  same  basis  with 
other  property,  and  under  the  same  treatment  must 
inevitably  pass  away. 

Its  recovery  when  astray  cannot  be  trusted  to  the 
laws  and  courts  by  which  recovery  of  other  property  is 
easy. 

It  is  not  natural  property,  but  the  creature  of  enact 
ment  ;  consequently  it  cannot  live  on  indifference.  A 
mother  cannot  leave  the  child  born  without  arms  to 
make  what  way  it  can  along  with  those  who  have  two. 
Slavery  has  grown  strong  by  being  the  darling  of  the 
government ;  it  can  now  live  by  nothing  less. 


COMPKOMISE.  39 

Our  leaders  cannot  yet  bring  themselves  to  treat 
slave-owners  with  no  more  consideration  than  cow-own 
ers  or  house-owners.  Would  a  general  offer  his  army 
to  recover  a  flock  of  sheep  which  had  taken  to  their 
heels,  affrighted  by  his  advancing  army?  Would  a 
commander  turn  aside  from  an  invasion  to  crush  out 
with  an  iron  hand  the  army-worm,  if  it  were  devastat 
ing  the  wheat  of  a  field  by  which  he  was  passing  ? 

Where  confiscation  must  touch  the  slaves  of  armed 
rebels,  —  more  perilous  as  they  are  to  us  than  thrice 
their  value  in  other  forms  of  property, — Congress  halts, 
hesitates,  mixes,  then,  holding  its  nose,  swallows.  This 
overweening  tenderness  is  the  meat  on  which  this  our 
Caesar  has  fed  that  he  hath  grown  so  great.  Mr. 
Breckenridge  truly  called  it  a  bill  for  the  abolition  of 
Slavery.  Now  wherever  our  flag  cuts  its  way,  liberty 
to  every  slave  must  go  with  it.  This  is  theory,  how 
ever  ;  actual  emancipation  comes  later.  "  He  found 
thereon  nothing  but  leaves ;  for  the  time  of  figs  was  not 

yet." 

In  the  present  conflict,  Slavery  has  been  more  candid 
than  we  could  have  claimed.  It  has  not,  with  the 
Northern  traitors,  based  its  secession  upon  personal-lib 
erty  bills :  in  some  regions  it  has  acknowledged  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law  to  be  unconstitutional ;  but  every 
where  it  has  not  failed  to  perceive  that  any  State  bill 
must  be  considered  constitutional  unless  the  appointed 
court  declares  it  otherwise,  and  has  craved  no  such 
decision,  even  with  a  court  suited  to  its  purposes.  It 


40  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

lias  not  based  its  movement  on  any  abridgment  of 
territorial  rights.  It  has  frankly  acknowledged  that 
its  very  existence  is  incompatible  with  the  existence 
of  free  government  and  popular  suffrage.  The  ballot- 
box  is  its  coffin.  It  demands  girdling  this  year:  it 
may  demand  hewing  down  next.  It  certainly  will. 

In  what  attitude  does  all  this  place  the  North  ? 

A  mother  fled  from  Moscow  in  a  sledge  drawn  by  an 
Arab  steed.  At  her  breast,  folded  warm  from  the  cold 
of  the  bitter  night,  she  held  her  babe.  Then  came 
the  wolf  upon  her  track,  witli  its  terrible  howl :  fast 
and  faster  sped  the  sledge  over  the  frozen  snow,  but  the 
hungry  wolf  gained  on  her.  Piece  by  piece  she  cast 
behind  all  the  provision  she  had ;  the  wolf  devoured 
each,  but,  with  hunger  only  whetted,  rushed  onward 
after  the  mother  and  her  child.  And  now,  when  it  was 
close  upon  her,  she  unwrapped  the  babe  that  nestled 
so  near  her  heart,  and  cast  it  to  the  wolf. 

Unnatural  mother !  Would  it  not  have  been  better 
than  thus  to  have  purchased  for  thyself  a  life  of  shame, 
to  have  turned  thyself  to  grapple  with  the  wolf,  and 
committed  thy  babe  to  the  Arab  steed  and  to  God  ? 

'T  is  but  a  picture  of  America,  with  hungry  Slavery 
howling  after  her.  Swift  and  relentless,  it  has  pursued 
her  :  to  it  she  has  cast  territory  after  territory  ;  to  it 
she  has  cast  her  treasures  and  much  of  her  best  blood  ; 
she  has  seized  from  weaker  nations  around  her  that 
with  which  she  thought  to  satiate  the  monster ;  she  has 
seized  the  panting  fugitive,  there  with  halo  of  divinity 


COMPROMISE.  41 

about  him,  and  torn  him  from  the  horns  of  God's  altar 
to  cast  to  the  wolf.  Insatiable,  it  presses  nearer,  and 
prepares  for  the  final  leap. 

And  now  the  question  is,  Shall  America  cast  to  the 
wolf  her  own  sacred  child,  —  Liberty  ? 

No! 

0  my  brothers,  a  thousand  times  No  !  Let  the  moth 
er,  let  America,  turn  to  cope  with  Slavery,  though  she 
be  torn  asunder,  but  let  the  holy  child  Liberty  over  all 
be  saved ! 

This,  then,  being  the  moral  situation  of  the  two  par 
ties,  each  knowing  the  very  existence  of  the  other  to  be 
its  own  destruction,  the  very  field  of  compromise  is  the 
field  of  battle. 

Freedom  and  Slavery  have  been  hugging  each  other 
so  hard  that  it  has  grown  to  a  death-hug. 

"We  need  not  fear  negotiation  too  much ;  in  this  stage 
of  the  conflict,  any  compromise  will  be  only  a  flag  of 
truce.  Some  timid  officials,  wishing  to  get  out  of  the 
region  of  "  villanous  saltpetre,"  may  send  out  such  a 
flag,  and  gain  an  armistice  for  a  few  months,  —  or 
years,  —  but  the  end  cannot  come  until  Slavery  or 
Liberty  lies  slain  ! 

It  is  written  :  "  Righteousness  and  Peace  have  kissed 
each  other."  Sixty  centuries  of  experience  have  add 
ed  :  "  Unrighteousness  and  "War  are  forever  linked  to 
gether." 

Can  any  compromiser  promise  us,  as  the  result  of  his 
4 


42  THE  EEJECTED   STONE. 

plan,  anything  else  than  the  old  "  irrepressible  con 
flict  "  ?  You  must  cut  the  heart  out  of  every  thinker 
and  reformer  in  America  ere  you  get  anything  else  ; 
and  resistance  is  the  multiplication-table  of  Reform. 

Is  this,  then,  as  some  affirm,  the  swelling  of  a  flood 
that  shall  presently  subside  again  ? 

A  traveller  came  to  a  river,  and  being  unable  to  ford 
it,  he  sat  down  on  its  banks,  saying,  "  I  will  wait  until 
the  river  has  flowed  by."  He  waited  long ;  he  built 
him  a  house  there  ;  and  when  the  traveller's  bones  were 
traces  of  white  lime,  and  the  house  marked  only  by  the 
luxuriance  of  weeds  on  its  site,  the  river  was  still  flow 
ing  by. 

Let  America  scorn  to  adjourn  to  her  children  in  the 
future  the  task  now  assigned  her :  she  is  too  old  in 
sorrow  already  not  to  know  that  a  postponement  is  all 
she  can  effect,  even  if  the  Kind  Hand  has  not  removed 
that  temptation.  "  The  cup  that  my  Father  hath  given 
me  to  drink,  shall  I  not  drink  it  ?  "  Not  to  be  evaded 
—  nor  dashed  aside  —  nor  spilled,  was  it  given. 

Hail,  hail  to  thee,  Messiah  of  Nations,  thou  who 
comest  from  Edom  with  thy  garments  dyed  red !  With 
thee  go  the  blessings,  for  thee  rise  the  prayers,  of  noble 
hearts  all  over  the  world,  as  thou  goest  forth  steadfastly 
to  tread  the  wine-press  prepared  by  Destiny  for  thy  feet, 
knowing  not  the  wine  that  shall  come,  only  that  it  shall 
make  glad  the  heart  of  man !  0  my  country,  there  is  a 


BROKEN.  43 

path  that  leads  from  Gethsemane,  garden  of  Agony,  up 
to  the  snow-pure  summit  of  Tabor,  Mount  of  Trans 
figuration.  There  shall  thy  nobler  children  rear  for 
thee  the  tabernacles  of  the  Past,  the  Present,  and  the 
Future ! 


IX. 

BROKEN. 

IN  an  old  Law-book  —  older  than  the  Constitution, 
or  the  Missouri  Compromise,  or  the  Omnibus  Bill  —  it 
is  written  of  the  Rejected  Stone  :  Whosoever  shall  fall 
on  this  stone  shall  be  broken;  but  on  whomsoever  it 
shall  fall,  it  will  grind  him  to  powder. 

Against  the  strong  arm  of  this  Universe  hold  out  as 
we  may,  at  length  to  its  behest  we  must  be  broken. 
The  Phoenician  replies  to  the  lightning  with  arrows  ;  at 
last  men  return  their  arrows  to  the  quiver,  and  lift  the 
lightning-rod  for  protection.  Canute  lashes  the  ad 
vancing  tide ;  at  last  men  note  the  high-water  mark, 
and  build  far  enough  beyond  it.  So  we  yield  in  the 
end. 

Broken !  'T  is  no  threat.  'T  is  no  violence.  The 
shuck  of  the  wheat  is  broken  under  the  flail,  that  the 
grain  may  be  separated  ;  the  grain  itself  is  broken,  that 


44  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

bread  may  be  kneaded.  Even  so  it  is  with  nations : 
under  the  flails  of  God  they  too  must  lie ;  upon  his  mill, 
forever  revolving,  they  must  be  broken. 

"  The  mills  of  God  grind  slow, 
But  they  grind  exceeding  small." 

In  the  pride  of  our  progress,  in  the  ruddy  strength  of 
our  youth,  we  lost  the  one  thread  that  links  the  present 
to  the  past,  we  neglected  the  ever-accumulating  tradi 
tion,  that  Justice  alone  can  really  exalt  a  nation,  that 
Justice  being  overturned  will  overturn.  A  few  years 
ago  our  leading  statesman  announced  that  there  was  a 
Higher  Law  than  any  human  code.  An  angry  echo  from 
every  point  of  our  national  compass  growled  back  upon 
him ;  the  majority  of  the  nation  defied  the  supreme 
right,  until  he  who  brought  the  tables  of  that  Higher 
Law  was  compelled  to  break  them.  Our  fathers,  kneel 
ing  with  reverence  before  the  sublime  fact,  still  fresh  in 
the  wonder  of  nations,  that  a  handful  of  men  had  been 
able  to  repel  the  strongest  of  nations,  simply  by  the 
power  of  rectitude  in  their  cause  to  engender  super 
human  strength,  had  recognized  the  Law  higher  than 
that  which  they  framed,  and  left  open  the  door  of 
Amendment  whereby  new  revelations  might  enter. 
But  our  nation  declared  for  nullification  of  the  Laws 
of  God.  It  declared  for  injustice.  It  announced  that 
the  black  man  had  no  right  that  the  white  man  was 
bound  to  respect.  It  enacted  that  every  American, 
when  called  on  by  an  arch  slave-hound,  should  at  once 


BROKEN. 


45 


get  down  on  all-fours,  and  become  a  slave-hound.  It 
went  on  from  whorl  to  whorl  of  corruption,  it  drew 
near  to  the  bottomless  pit,  when  suddenly  the  Great 
Hand  rescued  it  from  the  nearly  completed  death,  and 
cast  it  upon  a  glorious  Eevolution  to  be  broken. 

Did  we  think  to  gain  anything  by  consenting  to  sell 
our  brother  to  the  Egyptian,  heeding  not  his  cries  and 
tears  ?  Lo  !  a  mighty  famine  is  in  the  land,  and  the 
lost  Joseph  is  seen  clothed  with  the  power  of  locking 
all  the  produce  and  wealth  of  the  country. 

Begin  on  the  lowest  plane,  for  some  are  oxen  and 
must  be  led  by  hay,  and  ponder  well  the  "  broken  " 
fortunes  of  this  country,  resulting  from  its  proud  con 
ceit  that  it  could  outwit  the  equity  of  the  Universe  ! 
A  pre-^Bsopian  fable  relates  that  there  was  a  fox  who 
espied  a  garden  of  luscious  grapes.  To  this  garden, 
however,  he  could  find  but  one  opening,  and  that  was 
too  small  to  admit  his  somewhat  portly  dimensions. 
The  grapes  were  very  tempting,  —  what  could  Reynard 
do  ?  He  hit  upon  a  plan ;  he  would  fast  until  he 
became  lean  enough  to  get  through  the  hole  to  the 
garden.  Each  day  he  tried,  and  on  the  third  day  found 
himself  sufficiently  reduced  to  enter.  Judge  how  the 
hungry,  half-starved  rogue  enjoyed  those  delicious 
grapes !  But  hark !  there  is  the  sound  of  a  farmer's 
voice ;  —  surely  that  was  the  distant  bay  of  a  dog ! 
Master  Fox  finds  that  his  plan  is  not  altogether  safe ; 
the  close  fence  was  built  to  exclude  foxes.  He  hastens 
to  the  hole ;  but,  alas  !  he  finds  that  the  hole  which  was 

4* 


46  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

large  enough  to  admit  a  fox  that  had  been  fasting  three 
days,  is  too  small  for  a  fox  full  to  the  mouth  of  grapes. 
What  can  he  do  ?  Another  ominous  bay  of  the  distant 
hound  decides  him  ;  he  must  needs  fast  three  days 
more,  and  then,  just  as  the  gardener  and  his  dog  en 
tered,  he  managed  to  escape  just  as  lean  a  fox  as  he 
was  when  he  reached  the  delicious  grapes. 

Thus  it  was  that  the  Northern  fox  entered  the 
Southern  cotton-field.  On  what  a  low  diet  he  must 
put  himself!  "We  have  some  prejudices  against  the 
buying  and  selling  of  men,  which  don't  go  easily  into 
a  plantation."  Mr.  Webster  replies,  "  You  must  con 
quer  your  prejudices."  Good  heavens !  who  would 
have  thought  that  men  could  starve  out  to  such  an 
extent  the  love  of  justice,  the  conscience,  the  man 
hood  which  they  had  inherited !  Yet  the  State  would 
not  make  the  hole  bigger,  and  the  Church  did  not 
tempt  them  with  any  other  viands  to  abstain ;  and  at 
length  the  North  was  morally  reduced  enough  to  get 
on  its  knees  and  creep  into  the  small  aperture  to 
King  Cotton's  dominions.  Speedily  the  Yankee  fat 
tened  on  the  grapes ;  great  flakes  of  Wall  Street  stuck 
oiit  on  his  sides ;  State  Street  layers  puffed  out  his 
eyes  so  that  he  could  scarcely  see ! 

But  the  day  of  danger  looms  up.  When  Master 
Fox  gave  up  soul  and  heart  to  get  amongst  these 
Southern  grapes,  he  did  not  mean  to  give  up  himself 
also ;  but  here  Slavery  is  dogging  him  also.  We  need 
not  pursue  further  the  history  of  the  humiliating  ne- 


BROKEN.  47 

cessity  which  we  are  now  undergoing;  the  North  is 
now  disgorging  all  that  it  gained  by  years  of  shame 
ful  compliance  to  the  evil  of  the  South  and  the  crime 
of  the  nation ;  and  it  must  continue  to  pay  down  dol 
lar  on  dollar  until  it  reaches  some  new  Plymouth 
Rock,  as  lean  as  if  it  had  never  seen  the  garden  of 
the  South,  but  rich,  let  us  trust,  in  the  experience 
that  will  never  again  let  the  seeds  of  the  Mayflower 
wither  as  they  spring  up,  because  they  have  no  depth 
of  earth. 

The  Devil  seemed  to  be  the  shrewdest  of  Yankees ; 
now  the  old  proverb  is  remembered,  The  Devil  's  an 
ass. 

"  Thou  hast  conquered,  0  Galilean  !  "  said  dying  Ju 
lian,  the  Apostate.  The  North  may,  and  will,  now 
collect  the  bones  of  her  great-browed  children  who 
yielded  because  she  said  Yield  ;  the  fallen  pillars  of 
her  crumbled  Church ;  her  children  whose  wounds  yet 
smoke  fresh  from  the  stab  of  Slavery;  —  and,  broken 
now  upon  the  stone  she  so  long  refused,  shall  write 
as  their  epitaph, 

Vicisti,  O  Humanitas  ! 


48  THE  KEJECTED   STONE. 

X. 

THE    PRIVATEER. 

A  CRY  comes  up  to  the  ear  of  America,  —  a  long, 
piercing  cry  of  amazement  and  indignation,  —  recog 
nizable  as  one  which  can  come  only  when  the  pro- 
foundest  depths  of  the  human  pocket  are  stirred.  The 
privateers  are  at  large !  They  have  taken  away  my 
coffee,  and  I  know  not  where  they  have  laid  it.  They 
have  taken  my  India  goods  with  swords  and  staves. 
For  my  first-class  ship  they  have  cast  lots ! 

Was  such  depravity  ever  known  before  ?  So  long 
as  it  was  a  human  soul,  launched  by  God  on  the 
eternal  sea,  that  they  despoiled ;  so  long  as  it  was  only 
a  few  million  bales  of  humanity  captured ;  so  long 
as  it  was  but  the  scuttling  of  the  hearts  of  mothers 
and  fathers  and  husbands  and  wives,  —  we  remained 
patient  and  resigned,  did  we  not  ?  But  coffee  and 
sugar,  —  Good  God  !  what  is  that  blockade  about  ?  To 
seize  a  poor  innocent  sloop,  —  has  Slavery  no  bowels  ? 
And  its  helpless  family  of  molasses-barrels,  —  can  hearts 
be  so  void  of  pity  ?  Slavery  must  end.  The  spirit  of 
the  age  demands  it.  The  blood  of  a  dozen  captured 
freights  crieth  to  Heaven  in  silveriest  accents  against 
it. 

Brothers,  there  is  a  laughter  that  opens  into  the 
fountain  of  tears. 


THE   PRIVATEER.  49 

Can  you  tell  me,  you  ship-owners  and  rich  mer 
chants,  for  how  many  cycles  the  coffee-berries  ripened 
and  fell  ere  came  that  marvel,  a  human  hand,  to  gath 
er  them  for  you  ?  Will  you  ponder  the  stretch  of  the 
ages  when  fields  of  sugar-cane  rotted  to  bring  on  to 
new  growths,  and  these  to  others,  to  prepare  merely 
the  sod  worthy  to  support  the  foot-sole  of  the  man 
whom  you  have  seen  nailed  up  body  and  mind  in  your 
sugar-hogshead,  without  complaint,  so  long  as  the  sugar 
came  safely  to  hand  ?  Have  you  not  confused  things 
a  little,  imagining  that  in  Nature  the  dusky  man  was 
for  loam,  and  that  the  culminating  glory  and  flower 
of  the  universe  is  Cotton  ?  How  else  shall  we  inter 
pret  your  years  of  silence  and  calmness  when  only  men 
and  women  were  in  the  hands  of  the  privateer,  and 
your  outcry  when  old  metals  and  juices  and  vegetables 
are  imperilled  ? 

Yet,  too  thankful  that  even  thus  the  heart  of  trade 
is  moved,  one  who,  through  many  weary  years,  has 
watched  the  torches  kindled  at  the  Light  of  Lights 
flickering  their  lives  away  in  the  dark  caverns  under 
neath  Trade's  gay  saloons,  cannot  repress  delight  at  the 
gay  privateer.  God  speed  thee,  rakish  Sumter,  and 
thee,  swift-pouncer  Jeff.  Davis  !  May  Heaven's  blithest 
breezes  fill  your  sails,  until  your  arrows  of  conviction 
have  penetrated  every  unconvinced  heart !  We  have 
got  our  Scripture  interpretations  fearfully  confused  ; 
you  peppery  missionaries  will  shed  brilliant  exegetical 
light  over  the  land.  We  shall  have  revised  views  from 


50  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

President  Lord  on  the  curse  of  Canaan,  and  anti-piratic 
commentaries  on  the  case  of  Onesimus,  from  Nehemiah. 
Our  ethnology  has  become  somewhat  foggy ;  your  ar 
guments  will  be  stronger  than  the  now  fashionable  ones 
of  Nott  and  Gliddon  ;  we  may  discover  a  link  in  the 
races  lower  than  the  Negro,  without  travelling  with  Du 
Chaillu.  God  speed  thee,  brave  privateer ! 

So  long  as  African  Slavery  runs  the  blockade  of  the 
parties  and  churches  of  America,  so  long  may  the 
privateer  run  the  blockade  of  the  Southern  coast  with 
safety ! 


XI. 

A    FOREIGN    POWER. 

THE  promptness  with  which  the  Secretary  of  State 
has  expressed  the  position  of  our  government  on  our 
Transatlantic  relations,  has  elicited  the  warmest  com 
mendations  of  the  people.  It  has  been  distinctly  an 
nounced  that  in  this  contest  we  will  submit  to  no 
interference  and  accept  no  help  from  foreign  powers. 

Especially,  none  from  the  Powers  Above  ! 

Toward  the  last  foreign  powers  the  cold  shoulder 
has  been  turned  in  a  way  to  rejoice  the  hearts  of  the 
New  York  Herald  and  the  Boston  Courier,  and  many 
others,  who  have  long  insisted  ou  the  strict  application 


A  FOREIGN  POWER.  51 

of  the  Monroe  doctrine  to  the  government  of  God, 
whose  aims  at  encroachment  on  this  continent  they 
have  watched  with  such  a  jealous  eye. 

Yet  it  is  less  than  doubtful  if  we  can  conquer  with 
out  them,  or  irrespective  of  an  alliance  with  them. 

Except  as  the  two  are  symbols  of  other  facts,  we 
suppose  that  Humanity  at  large  is  entirely  indifferent 
whether  the  individual  residing  in  the  White  House  for 
the  next  four  years  is  named  J.  Davis  or  A.  Lincoln. 
If  these  two  represent  inferior  and  superior  principles, 
so  that,  as  one  or  the  other  rules  there,  the  shadow 
moves  forward  or  backward,  marking  progression  or 
retrogression  on  the  dial  of  civilization,  —  then  the 
world  is  pledged  to  the  superior.  But  suppose  that  to 
England,  for  instance,  there  are  presented  simply  two 
jarring  political  —  purely  political  —  interests,  in  the 
names  of  the  two  Presidents  ;  one  representing  the 
integrity  of  the  boundary-line  of  a  rival  nation,  the 
other  the  independence  of  a  nation  not  her  rival,  and 
on  which  she  is  dependent  for  cotton.  The  govern 
ment,  obeying  its  first  instinct,  self-preservation,  as  our 
own  does,  stands  perfectly  justified  in  taking  sides  with 
that  party  in  which  her  interest  is  most  involved.  Eng 
land  has  herself  set  up  the  standard  of  emancipation, 
and  to  that  her  people  would  hold  her ;  but  where 
that  principle  is  not  only  not  involved,  but  distinctly 
disclaimed,  the  people  will  leave  the  government  to 
the  normal  influences  of  the  cotton-mill.  They  do 
perfectly  right.  The  anti-slavery  men  of  Europe  have 


52  THE  EEJECTED   STONE. 

little  reason  to  choose  between  governments  supported 
by  Caleb  Gushing,  B.  F.  Butler,  and  the  New  York 
Herald,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Yancey,  Rhett,  and  Jeff. 
Davis,  on  the  other.  It  is  brought  before  Europe  as 
a  purely  political  question,  and  we  cannot,  without  a 
contemptible  conceit,  expect  any  element  to  determine 
the  attitude  of  Europe  toward  it  higher  than  POLICY. 
Is  not  popular  government  involved  ?  Assuredly  ;  but 
Europe  has  decided  already  that  popular  government 
is  not  good  ;  equally  it  has  decided  that  cotton  is 
good. 

Now  let  us  trace  this  same  principle  as  it  decides  our 
relation  to  the  transmundane  Power. 

Our  Congress  requested  the  President  to  appoint  a 
day  of  humiliation,  fasting,  and  prayer  ;  and  he  did  so  ; 
which  shows  that  we  have  rather  more  disposition  to 
conciliate  this  than  any  other  foreign  power.  This  is 
doubtless  due  to  our  late  defeat.  One  is  reminded  of 
the  psalm  our  fathers  sang,  — 

Jeshurun  he  waxed  fat, 

And  down  his  cheeks  they  hung, 
He  kicked  against  the  Lord  his  God, 

And  high  his  heels  he  flung. 

Jeshurun  was  reduced.  We  also  have  been  reduced, 
certainly  in  a  military,  and  we  trust  in  a  moral  sense. 
When  any  fruits  of  this  repentance  are  brought  forth, 
we  shall  be  glad  to  record  the  indications.  Thus  far 
we  stand  fighting  for  as  purely  a  selfish  end  as  the 
rebels  of  the  South. 


A  FOKEIGN  POWER.  53 

No  doubt  there  are  thousands  of  men  North,  and  with 
our  army  in  the  South,  who  plead  and  fight  for  justice 
and  freedom,  not  only  to  the  electors  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
but  also  to  men  of  every  color.  These  maintain  the 
government,  because  they  hope  that  in  its  contest  with 
the  slaveholder  the  slave  will  be  freed.  But  should  the 
star-spangled  banner  ever  float  on  the  shores  of  the 
Gulf  and  still  over  African  slaves,  the  hearts  of  thou 
sands  would  once  again  freeze  toward  this  nation,  and 
the  flag  of  Disunion  float  in  the  North  with  thousands 
around  it  where  hundreds  were  before. 

Our  President  and  his  premier  have  given  us  our 
watchword  ;  they  have  told  us  that  between  Slavery 
and  Freedom  there  is  an  "  irrepressible  conflict "  ;  if 
the  Union  with  slavery  in  it  is  regained,  all  will  know 
that  it  is  but  the  lull  of  the  volcano. 

Thomas  Jefferson  once  said  that,  if  the  South  were 
ever  to  witness  an  insurrection  of  slaves,  there  was  no 
attribute  of  God  which  could  take  the  side  of  the  op 
pressor  in  that  contest.  The  two  leading  commanders 
of  this  war  against  an  insurrection  initiated  their  en 
trance  into  the  regions  of  slavery  by  a  promise  of  crush 
ing  out  with  an  iron  hand  the  insurrection  of  slaves. 
In  other  words,  should  these  Negroes  take  side  with  our 
men  in  a  struggle  of  life  and  death,  they  would  be  shot 
down  for  helping  us  !  Another  general  proclaims  that 
no  fugitive  shall  enter  his  lines.  Our  President,  in  the 
midst  of  a  slaveholders'  insurrection,  and  on  the  blessed 
5 


54  THE  REJECTED  STONE. 

4th  of  July  itself,  sends  a  message  to  Congress  in  which 
slavery  is  not  remotely  alluded  to. 

Not  long  ago  a  distinguished  friend  of  the  Republic 
of  Haiti,  in  company  with  a  very  able  and  learned  Sena 
tor,  entered  the  office  of  a  very  wise  and  diplomatic 
Secretary  of  one  of  the  departments  of  this  govern 
ment;  whereupon  a  scene  like  this  occurred. 

Senator.  Mr.  Secretary,  permit  me  to  introduce  you 
to  Mr.  A.  B.,  a  friend  of  the  Haitian  government,  and 
authorized  to  represent  the  same  to  a  certain  extent. 

Secretary.     How  do  you  do,  Mr.  A.  B.  ? 

A.  B.     Quite  well,  I  thank  you. 

Senator.  The  Haitian  government  now  naturally 
hopes  that  the  success  of  Republicanism  secures  the 
recognition  of  her  Republic. 

A.  B.    She  is  ready  to  send  her  minister  at  any  time. 

Secretary  (twisting-  uneasily  in  his  seat).  Really, 
gentlemen,  this  is  a  very  grave  and  difficult  question, 
and  I  have  not  leisure  to  consider  it. 

Senator.  A  difficult  question  ?  'T  is  but  a  scratch 
of  your  pen. 

Secretary  (twisting  three  times  in  his  seat).  But, 
sir,  —  really,  sir,  —  I  —  I  — 

A.  B.  0,  do  not  let  us  press  it,  if  the  government  is 
averse  to  it. 

Secretary.  The  fact  is,  gentlemen,  Washington  can 
not  receive  a  black  minister. 

(Exeunt  Sen.  and  A.  B.  with  "  Good  mornings") 

The  Republican  Administration  had  answered  Repub- 


A  FOKEIGN  POWER.  55 

lican  Haiti  in  the  very  words  of  Henry  A.  Wise,  when, 
a  nation  freed  by  her  own  right  arm,  she  vainly  ap 
pealed  to  America  for  recognition,  as  America  had  a 
few  years  before,  and  under  the  same  circumstances, 
appealed  to  other  nations. 

The  intrenchments  about  Washington  may  be  very 
complete,  but  mark  this :  Washington  is  not  safe  until 
a  black  minister  can  be  received  there  ! 

Now,  whilst  we  are  speculating  as  to  the  possibility 
of  our  blockade  being  raised  by  France  and  England, 
would  it  not  be  well  for  us  to  see  if  we  have  not 
weakened  our  cause  and  our  force  by  completely  dis 
owning  the  only  moral  element  in  this  conflict  ? 

We  have  made,  or  are  in  danger  of  making,  four 
millions  of  disappointed  enemies  in  the  South,  whom 
we  might  have  counted  on  as  our  friends  in  any  emer 
gency.  Freedom  is  first  with  the  black,  as  with  every 
man ;  next  to  that,  the  evil  he  knows,  against  that  he 
knows  not.  Every  Negro  returned  to  his  master  —  to 
be  made  an  example  of  what  treacherous  Negroes  may 
expect  in  these  times  —  has  sown  amongst  his  com 
rades  the  seeds  of  hate  and  revenge  against  our  army. 

We  have  disheartened  many  of  our  noblest  and 
best  young  men,  by  degrading  wjth  a  taint  of  man- 
hunting  and  oppression  the  banner  and  the  cause. 

We  have  paralyzed  the  pulses  of  the  lovers  of  equal 
ity  and  liberty  all  over  the  world,  which  were  ready 
to  beat  toward  us  with  a  steady  tide  of  sympathy  and 
encouragment.  How  could  Victor  Hugo  or  Garibaldi 


56  THE  KEJECTED   STONE. 

extend  their  hands  to  a  general,  who,  with  the  very 
weapon  with  which  he  is  defending  his  own  liberty, 
is  ready  to  crush  others  who  would  seek  theirs? 

We  have  lost  the  battle  of  Manasses,  and  with  it 
the  prestige  of  a  first  victory  and  the  order  of  an 
army,  chiefly  because  General  McDowell's  colorpho- 
bia  must  cut  off  the  Negro's  hope,  and  with  it  his  own 
only  source  of  information.  It  was  a  crime  and  a 
blunder. 

In  refusing  to  recognize  Haiti  we  have  shrouded 
the  one  light  that  might  now  be  shining  over  the 
darkest  problem  of  this  war. 

Would  it  not  be  a  curious  case  of  poetic  justice  if, 
in  a  year  from  now,  we  should  witness  a  "  situation  " 
somewhat  like  the  following  ? 

1.  The  United  States  calling  on  the  slaves  of  the 
South,    to   whose    bondage   she   has    so   long   been   a 
party,  whose  possible  freedom  by  confiscation  she  re 
luctantly  approved,  to  save    her    entire  people  from 
subjugation. 

2.  The  United  States  begging  Haiti  to  help  her  sus 
tain  and  shield   millions   of  manumitted   women   and 
children,   and    invoking   a    black    minister    at  Wash 
ington. 

The  army  of  the  United  States  is,  without  doubt, 
fighting  for  the  liberty  of  the  slave;  but  so  also  is 
the  army  of  the  Confederate  States.  Both  are,  by 
compulsion,  hastening  the  day  of  freedom  (but  that 


A   FOREIGN  POWER.  57 

is  scarcely  more  our  object  than  it  is  theirs).  Indeed, 
the  Southern  army  has  done  more  of  this  indirect  ser 
vice  to  humanity  than  our  own.  With  both  it  has 
been  involuntary.  There  is  a  Power  behind  both 
thrones  at  work.  Freedom  sits  above,  in  calmness  and 
light,  and  we  know  her  star  cannot  recede  below  the 
horizon ;  but  whether  she  is  to  be  advanced  the  next 
step  by  a  dreadful  retribution  to  the  recreant  North, 
or  by  the  conquest  of  the  South,  is,  alas !  yet  doubt 
ful.  Again  and  again  have  strong  governments,  not 
built  upon  the  head  corner-stone  of  Justice,  been 
buried  under  the  splendor  of  their  own  ruins,  that 
humanity  at  large  might  have  another  monument  to 
say,  REMEMBER. 

Were  our  cause  sanctified  by  any  universal  princi 
ple,  the  arm  of  God,  whose  sinews  are  the  true  hearts 
of  the  whole  world,  would  be  folded  about  us.  "  But," 
it  is  replied,  "  we  are  fighting  for  the  principle  of 
free  suffrage ;  it  is  bullets  arraigning  ballots."  Yet 
scarcely  can  free  suffrage  be  called  a  principle.  It  is 
an  institution  yet  on  trial  in  the  world ;  it  has  yet  to 
make  its  cause  good  at  the  tribunal  of  Reason.  Free 
dom  of  the  ballot  is  not  necessarily  good  in  itself; 
if  it  results  in  perpetuating  injustice,  or  in  anarchy, 
it  proves  itself  a  wrong  principle.  New  York  City  has 
had  to  ask  the  State  Legislature  to  select  her  munici 
pal  officers.  England  may  well  point  to  her  superior 
freedom  under  limited  suffrage.  Her  members  of 
Parliament  are  not  assassinated;  her  Queen  does  not 
5* 


58  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

have  to  pass  from  Scotland  to  London  in  disguise ; 
there  is  no  county  of  her  kingdom  where  her  most 
radical  orator  is  debarred  an  entrance  on  penalty  of 
tar  and  feathers.  All  these  evils  have  for  years  co 
existed  with  our  popular  suffrage ;  and  our  Republi 
can  Administration  would  hardly  have  molested  one 
of  them,  had  the  South  not  precipitated  this  rebellion. 
Therefore  we  still  maintain  that,  as  far  as  our  gov 
ernment  is  concerned,  that  is,  saving  a  reserved  purpose 
among  the  unofficial  masses  whose  power  is  yet  to  be 
measured,  we  have  no  aim  in  this  conflict  that  makes 
our  cause  the  cause  of  Destiny,  or  our  success  any  ne 
cessary  step  in  the  progression  of  the  world. 


XII. 

MANASSE  S. 

IT  is  said  that  one  of  our  army  chaplains  had  pre 
pared  a  discourse  on  the  text,  "  Manasseh  is  mine." 
It  was  never  preached :  at  daybreak  his  regiment  was 
marching  forward,  with  the  hope  of  preaching  the  same 
text  from  the  cannon's  mouth.  But  the  text  has  re 
mained  a  vision  in  the  Psalms. 

Manasses  is  a  symbol.  The  assault  and  the  courage 
of  it,  the  repulse  and  the  shame  of  it,  symbolize  with 


MANASSES.  59 

unerring  accuracy  a  certain  moral  status  of  our  nation, 
consequently  of  its  army,  which,  by  the  conditions  of 
the  Universe,  did  not  deserve  Manasses  and  did  not 
obtain  it.  Why  were  we  defeated  there  ?  We  had 
poor  generals.  Why  had  we  poor  generals  ?  Why 
was  Patterson  enabled  by  his  cowardice  or  treachery  to 
make  our  disaster  sure,  after  McDowell  by  blunderingly 
marching  in  the  dark  had  made  it  probable  ?  Both  of 
these  men  were  known  as  life-long  cringers  to  the  men 
they  were  sent  to  fight.  If  John  Brown  had  been  with 
a  United  States  army  at  Harper's  Ferry,  would  he  have 
been  animated  with  what  seems  to  have  been  Patter 
son's  one  aim,  —  to  return  his  young  volunteers  safe  to 
their  parents  unharmed  ?  Not  so  did  John  Brown  re 
turn  his  own  sons.  If  Montgomery  of  Kansas  had  been 
at  Fairfax,  would  he  have  scorned  the  only  medium  of 
intelligence  and  real  help,  —  the  fugitive  negro  ? 

Why  were  these  men,  who  had  proved  themselves 
moral  cowards,  set  to  control  the  forces  of  Liberty  ? 
The  Administration  took  them  because  the  country  was 
not  up  to  furnishing  or  standing  by  better  men.  The 
men  who  would  unweariedly,  sleeplessly,  with  the  fire- 
heart  of  Peter  the  Hermit  and  the  iron  nerve  of  Crom 
well,  have  pressed  upon  and  taken  Manasses  on  that 
Sunday,  were  men  whose  appointment  would  have  re 
turned  on  the  Administration  a  storm  of  indignation. 
The  country  would  have  been  divided,  and  perhaps 
surrendered. 

Had  the  country  been  up  to  a  victory  at  Manasses,  it 


60  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

would  have  been  previously  up  to  having  Charles  Sum- 
ner  for  President. 

But  let  us  search  a  little  further.  We  have  seen  that 
we  were  outgeneralled  because  we  had  half-hearted  men 
to  lead  our  forces.  Our  soldiers  fought  bravely,  ear 
nestly,  and  had  almost  won  the  day.  Why  that  panic  ? 
The  intrenchments  of  the  enemy  were  perfect :  our  sol 
diers  conquered  one  battery  only  to  find  themselves  at 
the  mercy  of  two  covering  it.  It  had  been  impossible 
that  Panic  could  have  stormed  our  army  if  Despair  had 
not  first  weakened  it.  Our  army  fought  long  after 
every  soldier  was  convinced  that  they  would  never 
occupy  Manasses  that  day. 

There  were  long  months  when,  it  is  known,  there 
were  few  if  any  batteries  or  forces  at  Manasses.  Only 
give  me  time  enough,  and  I  will  make  any  hen-coop 
impregnable  to  all  the  artillery  now  on  this  continent. 
The  entire  defences  of  that  pass  were  reared  by  a  most 
culpable  fault  on  the  part  of  our  military  and  civic 
leaders,  who  will  stand  on  the  page  of  History  which 
records  that  day  as  parties  to  a  base  deception  of  the 
American  people.  It  is  now  evident  that  they  began 
this  contest  on  a  theory  radically  different  from  that 
which  the  people  had  determined  was  the  only  one 
consistent  with  their  national  honor.  The  people  were 
willing  to  trust  them  with  the  method,  so  long  as  it  was 
understood  that  the  object  to  be  reached  was  assigned 
by  them  exclusively.  Deliberately  and  absolutely  the 
people  had  decided  that  there  should  be  no  new  guar- 


MAXASSES.  61 

anties  to  Slavery  ;  that  there  should  be  no  compromise, 
however  infinitesimal ;  that  this  issue  should  fairly  and 
squarely  be  an  acceptance  of  the  gauntlet  thrown  at 
their  feet  by  the  South.  Yet  there  succeeded  the  up 
rising  of  the  people  a  delay  which,  under  their  very 
eyes,  was  improved  by  the  enemy  to  make  Virginia  one 
large  masked  battery. 

There  is  no  question  of  military  tactics  and  strata 
gem  here,  only  a  question  of  common  sense  and  honesty. 
The  men  who  repulsed  drilled  regulars  at  Concord 
Bridge  did  not  wait  for  large  arrays,  fine  uniforms,  and 
months  of  drill.  Nay,  determination  and  rapidity  had 
already  done  for  us  in  Missouri  what  slowness  and 
Hardee  have  undone  for  us  at  Washington,  and  would 
have  so  continued  had  not  Washington  stretched  its 
red  tape  into  Missouri.  These  men  at  the  South  were 
even  more  undisciplined  than  ours;  we  should  have 
been  so  far  equal ;  they  were  our  superiors  in  one  thing 
alone,  —  they  had  stolen  the  means  of  putting  a  battery 
on  every  square  acre  of  their  frontier.  To  fight  at  once, 
we  were  stronger  in  numbers  and  as  well  drilled:  to 
delay  until  they  were  fortified  was  to  make  us  inferior, 
—  the  axiom  being  that  one  man  behind  the  trenches 
equals  four  outside.  The  Secessionists  of  Maryland 
and  Missouri  have  publicly  declared,  "  We  were  con 
quered  only  by  being  surprised."  Virginia  might  have 
been  to-day  joining  in  the  same  confession. 

Meanwhile,  about  all  this  unfathomable  strategy  at 
Washington  —  which  reminds  one  of  Dr.  Cudworth, 


62  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

who,  in  his  contest  with  the  Atheists,  stated  their  argu 
ment  so  strongly  that  he  could  n't  answer  it  himself — 
there  were  indications  that  this  delay  was  more  for 
diplomatic  than  for  military  reasons.  No  traitor  was 
treated  as  if  we  were  at  war.  Mr.  Breckenridge,  in  his 
seat  in  the  Senate,  taunted  the  government  that  it  had 
not  dared  treat  seized  rebels  as  by  nations  they  are 
treated.  The  people  saw  their  own  soldiers  scourged 
and  shot  for  offences  in  the  camp,  —  offences  half  in 
duced  by  the  demoralization  of  the  delay,  —  whilst 
spies  and  assassins  were  released  on  their  already  per 
jured  parole. 

It  became  probable  to  large  numbers  in  this  country, 
who  hesitated  naturally  to  express  their  suspicion,  that 
TWO  MEN  at  Washington,  the  one  in  the  military,  the 
other  in  the  civic  department,  each  a  possible  President 
and  hitherto  associated  with  that  office,  were  running 
a  race,  each  hoping  to  loom  up  before  a  reunited 
country  as  A  GREAT  PACIFICATOR. 

Equally  were  these  people  convinced  that  their  Presi 
dent  was  entirely  trustworthy,  and  that  no  such  base 
pacification  could  be  carried  on  without  his  being  de 
ceived  with  the  rest  of  the  people. 

The  suspicion  increased  when  it  came  out  that  Mr. 
Seward  had  held  correspondence  with  Judge  Campbell, 
and  that  a  quasi-armistice  had  been  made  at  Pickens  of 
which  our  President  was  "  imperfectly  informed." 

The  suspicion  spread  like  a  contagion  that  we  were 
deceived.  The  government  gave  no  response  ;  no  act 


MAN  ASSES.  t>6 

was  done,  no  traitor  hung,  to  show  that  the  government 
meant  what  the  people  meant,  until  at  last,  the  misgiv 
ing  of  our  earnest  masses  becoming  intolerable,  they 
uttered  their  whole  heart  in  that  noble  war-cry,  FOR 
WARD  TO  RICHMOND  ! 

The  Tribune,  which  was  the  tongue  worthy  to  utter 
it,  did  indeed  bow  to  the  storm  which  always  meets  the 
Cassandras  who  utter  too  soon  what  all  see  presently ;  but 
it  will  one  day  claim  that  watchword  as  the  dearest 
laurel  among  the  many  it  has  nobly  earned  in  this  con 
flict,  and  the  people  will  one  day  remember  those  who 
told  them  the  truth  at  risk  of  their  own  displeasure, 
and  as  long  as  they  could  hear  it. 

It  was  not  its  fault,  nor  that  of  the  people  for  whom 
it  spoke,  that  stupid  or  selfish  men,  and  deceivers  of  the 
nation,  perverted  those  words  into  "  Forward  to  Rich 
mond  half  harnessed  !  Forward  whilst  your  regiments 
are  in  camps  all  over  the  North !  Forward  on  empty 
stomachs !  Be  sure  you  take  but  one  man  to  their 
three !  Be  sure  you  depend  for  reinforcement  on  a 
man  whom  the  mob  of  Philadelphia  had  to  force  into 
showing  his  colors  !  " 

No  loyal  heart  in  America  should  have  failed  to 
recognize  the  plain  and  ominous  tones  concentred  in 
that  war-cry.  It  meant,  —  and  many  a  tricky,  trembling 
diplomat  in  Washington  knew  that  it  meant,  —  We, 
the  people  of  America,  are  determined  for  once  that  we 
will  not  be  deceived  !  We  do  not  deplore,  but  welcome, 
the  hails  that  are  now  to  sweep  away  the  refuges  of 


64  THE  KEJECTED   STONE. 

lies  which  politicians  have  been  building  out  of  the 
rights  and  honor  of  the  nation.  Gentlemen  of  Wash 
ington,  civic  and  military,  we  have  arisen  in  our  might ; 
each  family  has,  with  tears  of  agony,  but  no  less  eagerly, 
laid  on  the  altar  its  first  and  fairest  fruits  ;  we  have, 
rather  than  offer  a  compromise  of  right  and  honor, 
surrendered  wealth,  nay,  some  of  us  the  bread  on  our 
tables  ;  we  have  shown  you  that  we  are  in  earnest. 
We  have  yet  to  see  one  fact  at  our  Capitol  indicating' 
that  you  are  in  earnest  as  we  are.  These  men  you 
release  on  parole,  we  regard  as  the  murderers  of  our 
country.  These  men  you  write  billets  to,  we  regard  as 
the  would-be  assassins  of  our  husbands,  brothers,  fa 
thers,  and  sons.  "We  will  not  be  cheated.  We  distrust 
your  moral  position  toward  this  rebellion.  No  defeat 
that  can  befall  us  on  our  way  to  Richmond  can  be  so 
bad  as  being  defeated  by  some  patchwork  of  compro 
mise  in  our  purpose  of  settling  this  issue  with  the  South 
once  and  forever.  We  demand,  then,  that  by  some 
decisive  blow,  even  if  it  recoil  upon  us,  we  shall  be 
utterly  committed  to  this  war.  We  demand  that  the 
chasm  shall  be  made  so  complete,  that  the  most  abject 
trifler  who  desires  to  bridge  it  with  a  compromise  shall 
see  that  his  effort  would  only  sink  him  in  the  abyss. 
Therefore,  forward  to  Richmond  ! 

All  this  was  in  that  war-cry,  which  is  to  be  uttered 
yet  again,  and,  though  with  the  united  voice  of  the 
country,  with  no  more  nobility  than  it  possessed  at 
first. 


MANASSES.  65 

When  General  Scott  heard  of  the  defeat  at  Manasses, 
he,  with  great  excitement,  said  that  the  President  should 
depose  him  as  a  coward,  because  he  yielded  to  this 
popular  pressure.  General  Scott  is  not  physically  a 
coward.  Is  he  a  moral  coward  ?  Shall  we  take  him 
at  his  word  ?  History  records,  that  a  great  commander 
wrote  after  a  defeat,  "  I  have  lost  a  great  battle,  and 
entirely  by  my  own  fault."  In  saying  this  he  gained  a 
greater  victory  than  he  lost.  Had  as  sincere  and  great 
a  spirit  commanded  at  "Washington,  we  believe  the 
country  would  have  received  some  such  message  as 
this  :  — 

"To  THE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES:  — 

"  We,  some  of  your  official  leaders,  have  lost  you  a 
great  battle,  by  our  own  fault,  as  far  as  that  fault  can 
be  traced  to  any  individuals,  which  arises  from  the 
general  corruption  of  the  government  through  the  ma 
laria  of  Slavery.  When  you  and  your  President  de 
cided  to  fight  for  this  government,  we,  your  public 
servants,  tacitly  meant  to  pacificate  and  compromise. 
Acting  under  this  purpose,  we  gave  to  you  as  a  reason 
for  delay  a  military  pretext.  We  had  no  doubt  that 
the  South  would  compromise.  They  secretly  encour 
aged  us  to  think  so,  until,  when  it  was  too  late  to 
remedy  our  mistake,  they  showed  that  their  desire 
for  peace  was  a  feint  to  get  time  for  fortification. 
When  we  came  to  see  for  the  first  time  definitely 
that  the  question  must  be  settled  by  arms,  the  nation 


66  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

was  already  demanding  that  our  delay  should  end. 
It  was  natural  they  should  so  demand.  But  our  first 
deception  could,  unless  openly  confessed,  lead  only  to 
the  defeat  of  our  forces.  We  could  not  muster  courage 
to  acknowledge  the  result  of  our  folly ;  —  to  say,  '  The 
advance  which  was  feasible  two  months  ago  has,  by 
our  delay  for  negotiation,  been  rendered  impossible. 
Our  honest  reply  to  your  Forward  to  Richmond  !  is, 
that  it  cannot  be  done  for  six  months  or  more  without 
too  much  cost,  and  to  advance  now  would  be  to  wash 
out  a  political  deception  in  the  blood  of  brave  men.' 
We  had  not  the  moral  courage  to  say  it:  the  fatal 
result  came." 

The  People  reply :  — 

"  Whether  the  people  decide  that  you  gentlemen 
who  hold  power  under  this  administration  are  the  right 
men  in  the  right  place,  or  the  opposite,  they  cannot 
allow  the  blame  to  fall  on  you  for  a  default  which  is 
much  more  their  own.  They  remember  that  a  wise  man 
affirmed,  '  The  people  are  always  correctly  represented.' 
Their  leaders,  military  and  civic,  had  every  reason  to 
suppose  that  a  people,  who  have  for  so  many  years 
submitted  to  having  their  honor  bought  and  sold  by 
their  representatives,  had  still  their  price.  Though 
now,  '  a  nation  born  in  a  day,'  they  abhor  their  former 
stupidity  and  insensibility  toward  Human  Rights,  no 
less  than  their  own  self-respect,  yet  they  cannot  reason 
ably  complain  that  these  newly  unsealed  fountains  have 


MANASSES.  67 

not  as  yet  cleansed  the  Augean  stables  of  Washington. 
Therefore  we  set  up  our  memorial  pillar  at  Manasses, 
on  it  writing,  '  Here  outraged  Humanity  was  avenged 
upon  a  nation  that,  from  the  day  of  its  own  liberation, 
heard  the  scourges  that  fell,  heard  the  cries  of  the 
stricken,  and  heeded  not,  but  went  on  in  ignoble  rest, 
until  the  very  sword  which  guarded  their  own  liberties 
had  rusted  in  its  scabbard.'  Therefore  we  take  to 
ourselves  the  reproach  you  have  heaped  on  yourselves, 
to  bear  it  with  you ;  and  if  we  call  new  leaders  to 
your  places,  it  is  not  for  punishment,  but  it  is  another 
effort  to  make  ourselves  understood  at  Washington ; 
it  must  be  there  known  that  we,  the  people,  are  in 
earnest ;  that  we  are  absolutely  determined  that  this 
rebellion  shall  be  crushed,  and  that  in  no  case  shall  one 
half  of  this  continent  be  given  over  to  the  dominion 
of  Slavery  and  Barbarism ;  and  that  whosoever  shall 
put  himself  in  the  way  of  this  purpose  shall  be  swept 
off  as  by  a  flood." 

Here  let  us  end  this  sad  chapter,  —  as  painful  to  him 
who  wrote  it  as  to  any  who  shall  read  it. 


THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

XIII. 

BETH-EL. 

THIS  was  the  name  that  the  patriarch  gave  to  the 
place  where  he  came  a  wanderer :  there  the  sun  went 
down,  and  he  slept  with  a  stone  for  his  pillow.  In  that 
night,  over  that  stony  pillow,  hovered  the  angels ;  and 
in  the  morning  "  he  took  the  stone  that  he  had  for  a 
pillow  and  set  it  up  for  a  pillar."  From  his  hard  lot 
uprose  his  strength. 

Hard  was  the  pillow  given  at  Manasses,  upon  which 
America  must  rest  her  head.  Is  there  no  heavenward 
ladder  stretching  up  from  that  grief?  Can  she  not  also 
take  her  stony  pillow  and  set  it  up  for  a  pillar  of  future 
strength  ?  "  Experience,"  says  Carlyle,  "  does  charge 
dreadfully  high  school-wages,  but  she  teaches  as  none 
other."  To  the  same  end  Burns's  cheery  verse  :  — 

"  Though  losses  and  crosses 

Be  trials  right  severe, 
There  's  wit  then,  you  '11  find  there, 
You  '11  get  no  other  where." 

Tlie  first  and  most  important  lesson  inculcated  at 
Manasses  is,  that  God  is  NOT  on  the  side  of  the  best  bat 
talions. 

I  know  that  Napoleon  said  he  was ;  but  I  also  know 
that  soon  after  he  began  to  act  on  that  principle  his 


BETH-EL.  69 

Battalion-Providence  took  him  to  perish  on  a  small 
rock  off  the  coast  of  Africa. 

There  was  a  time  when  Napoleon's  battalions  were 
arrayed  on  the  side  of  God ;  his  eye  was  filled  with  the 
coronation-day  of  Humanity,  not  of  himself;  then  indeed 
he  was  the  Man  of  Destiny,  for  Freedom  marches  to  the 
drum-beat  of  Destiny.  Then  it  was  that  Beethoven, 
lover  of  the  people,  wrote  the  "  Symphony  for  a  Hero." 
But  soon  one  brought  the  old  composer  tidings  of 
his  idol  which  caused  him  to  leap  from  his  seat,  and 
tear  the  Symphony,  and  cast  it  to  the  fire ;  then,  with 
tears,  he  sat  down  and  wrote  the  "  Funeral  March  for  a 
Hero,"  who,  as  a  person,  was  still  living.  Alas !  he  lived 
no  more  for  Man :  the  Eternal  Thought  he  demanded 
should  shape  itself  to  his  battalions.  So  the  halo  of 
Napoleon  faded  to  a  diadem. 

There  is  nothing  arbitrary  or  specially  providential 
in  all  this.  He  lost  his  faith  in  the  power  of  ideas,  in 
the  tremendous  power  of  enthusiasm  for  a  high  cau&e  ; 
forgot  that  the  sword  that  seemed  to  translate  the  light 
ning  when  striking  for  eternal  Truth  and  Right,  was 
but  a  piece  of  steel,  or  less,  when  carving  a  throne  for 
a  man,  even  though  that  man  were  Napoleon.  Again 
and  again  the  lesson  has  been  assigned  us  to  learn. 
Xerxes,  advancing  upon  Greece  with  his  countless  host, 
does  not  find  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  strongest. 
The  same  testimony  was  borne  at  the  baptismal  blood- 
font  of  this  nation,  and  the  world  called  to  observe  how 
three  millions  had  successfully  repelled  for  eight  years 

6* 


70  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

the  strongest  nation  on  earth,  and  at  last  brought  it  to 
terms,  simply  because  their  cause  bore  with  it  the  in 
spiration  of  Liberty. 

It  seems  that  we  needed  Manasses  to  remind  us  of 
it  once  more. 

"  What !  was  the  cause  of  the  rebels,  and  not  that 
of  our  nation,  the  cause  of  Liberty  ?  " 

Let  us  not  fear  to  face  the  facts,  most  of  all  this 
chief  one  :  They  were  fighting  for  their  liberty.  True, 
it  was  their  liberty  ;  the  liberty  of  Wrong,  the  free 
course  of  Anarchy,  the  untrammelled  rule  of  Passion, 
the  uncurbed  privilege  of  trampling  the  most  sacred 
rights  and  hopes  of  mankind,  —  a  liberty  which  the 
laws  of  this  Universe  forevermore  deny  !  Still,  mark  ! 
this  blow  for  animal  liberty  calls  up  the  animal  ferocity 
and  strength,  which  can  be  mastered  only  by  an  equal 
passion  and  fortitude  for  the  higher  liberty.  Fanati 
cism  is  only  second  in  strength  to  inspiration ;  and  we 
ca^i  conquer  in  this  war  only  when  the  love  of  Human 
ity  inspires  us  as  fully  as  the  love  of  Slavery  inspires 
the  South.  Enthusiasm  for  bunting ;  interest  in  a 
boundary  line ;  concern  for  the  control  of  the  Missis 
sippi  ;  "  institutions  bequeathed  by  our  fathers  "  ;  "  the 
glorious  fabric  of  our  Union  "  ;  —  I  warn  you,  my 
countrymen,  that  at  whatever  Manasses  these  alone 
meet  the  arms  that  fight  for  the  kingdom  of  Oppression, 
they  will  be  swept  away  as  by  a  blasting  sirocco. 

Let  us  follow  the  approved  maxim  that  bids  us  learn 
from  our  enemy,  and  sit  at  the  rebels'  feet  a  moment. 


BETH-EL.  71 

See  how  he  fights  for  Slavery  !  See  how  pitiless  he  is 
to  the  enemy  of  Slavery  !  Do  you  live  in  a  Slave 
State  ;  say  one  word  against  the  institution,  and  see 
if  the  hearts  that  knew  your  childhood  do  not  freeze 
to  ice,  and  if  the  arms  once  twined  about  you  will  not 
be  drawn  to  strike  !  Over  all  the  appeals  of  relation 
ship  and  affection,  over  all  the  claims  of  brain  to  think 
or  tongue  to  speak,  over  wasted  humanity,  Saharas  of 
ignorance,  over  the  interests  of  property,  —  OVER  ALL, 
the  Slave-God  sits  amidst  his  devotees.  He  has  his 
martyrs,  as  much  as  Brahm  or  Jehovah.  The  parallel 
drawn  between  the  warfare  of  Sepoy  and  Southerner  is 
not  fanciful ;  all  races  fight  so  for  their  religions,  and 
Slavery  is  the  real  and  only  religion  of  the  South.  To 
it  other  regions  are  evil  in  proportion  to  their  freedom  ; 
other  Free  States  are  diabolical,  more  or  less  ;  Massa 
chusetts  is  the  Devil,  because  Antislavery  is  Antichrist. 
Our  reporters  have  told  to  horror-stricken  ears  the 
cruel  excesses  which  succeeded  the  battle  of  Manasses. 
A  young  man  from  the  North,  we  are  told,  finding  a 
rebel  soldier  in  a  swoon,  proffered  his  canteen  ;  the 
Southerner  drank,  and  revived,  then  immediately  shot 
his  benefactor.  The  story  is  intrinsically  credible. 
Returning  from  his  swoon,  his  first  thought  was  for 
his  cause,  and  the  blow  for  that  cause  which  he  was 
on  that  field  to  strike  !  Supposing  him  even  to  have 
comprehended  all,  —  to  have  recognized  his  preserver 
in  his  country's  enemy,  to  have  felt  the  gratitude  which 
any  brute  must  feel,  —  yet  what  business  has  he  to  let 


72  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

gratitude  or  any  personal  feeling  come  between  him 
and  his  cause  ?  That  benefactor  may  be  the  very  man 
to  send  a  ball  through  Jeff.  Davis's  heart !  He  is  not 
his  own,  else  he  could  press  that  kindly  hand  ;  he  is 
Slavery's,  and  Slavery  has  whispered  all  other  spirits 
out  of  him,  and  filled  him  with  its  own.  Ah,  if  Free 
dom  but  had  champions  so  surcharged  with  her  spirit ! 

Slavery  is  a  god,  and  has  in  the  South  gradually 
created  his  own  new  heavens  and  new  earth.  In  the 
latter  generations,  he  has  moulded  the  very  brains  in 
their  wombs  to  his  own  image  and  likeness,  so  that  they 
reek  with  hot  blood  when  any  foe  speaks  in  unbelief  of 
their  creator.  He  is  dear  to  them  as  to  the  eye  is  the 
light  of  which  it  is  the  organism. 

Now,  Northmen,  with  what  do  you  confront  this  ? 
Have  you  any  Freedom-frenzy,  with  its  superhuman 
strength  ?  Do  you  worship  Liberty  with  a  passion  such 
as  the  heart  has  for  its  blood  ?  Is  Liberty  an  uncom- 
promisable  principle  to  you,  so  that  you  count  its  foes 
the  agents  of  the  fiend  upon  earth  ?  Has  Boston 
treated  Mr.  Yancey,  when  there  pleading  for  Slavery, 
as  Charleston  treated  Mr.  Hoar,  when  there  to  dis 
tantly  hint  Liberty  ?  or  does  Ohio  treat  Breckenridgc 
as  Virginia  treats  Nelson  of  Tennessee  ? 

The  other  day,  Mr.  Speaker  Grow,  retiring  tempo 
rarily  from  the  chair  of  the  House,  called  to  that  seat 
Mr.  Burnett  of  Kentucky,  an  avowed  sympathizer  with 
treason.  Some  one  called  attention  to  the  contrast 
between  the  Republican  and  the  Southern  Speaker, 


BETH-EL.  73 

Orr,  who  never  called  any  one  to  the  chair  but  one  of 
his  own  party,  and  evidently  considered  the  contrast 
in  Mr.  Grow's  favor  !  Trace  the  course  of  the  two 
Speakers,  and  they  will  take  you  logically  to  the  rela 
tive  positions  of  the  two  armies  on  the  evening  of 
July  21st.  And  until  the  country  has  got  so  far  be 
yond  these  sentimentalities  as  not  only  to  condemn 
utterly  even  so  slight  a  dapperness  as  that  of  Mr. 
Grow,  but  to  render  it  as  impossible  for  Burnett  to 
sit  in  Congress  as  it  would  be  for  John  M.  Botts  to 
be  in  the  Richmond  Congress,  it  will  put  its  trust  in 
chariots  and  horsemen  in  vain.  We  are  not  in  earnest 
for  Freedom,  as  they  are  for  Slavery ;  our  battalions 
are  not  on  the  side  of  our  God,  theirs  are  thoroughly 
and  utterly  on  the  side  of  their  God.  Therefore  we 
stand  mystified  and  irritated,  —  eighteen  millions  held 
at  bay  and  repulsed  by  eight ! 

At  last,  when  it  was  too  late,  Napoleon  had  learned 
the  deeper  lesson,  and  he  said,  "  No  people  devoted  to 
its  government  and  institutions  can  be  conquered." 
Devoted,  observe  !  It  is  the  old  word  for  victims  bound 
on  altars  devoted  to  the  gods  ;  and  Napoleon  saw  that 
men  could  be  thus  sacredly  devoted  to  their  freedom, 
thus  laid  on  the  altar  of  their  country,  and  that,  when 
they  were  so,  something  stronger  than  heavy  artillery 
was  at  work.  So,  by  his  own  authority,  we  must  change 
the  maxim,  and  read :  The  best  battalions  are  those  on 
the  side  of  God. 

Another  lesson,  and  one  following  on  this,  is,  that  we 


74  THE  EEJECTED   STONE. 

must  regard  the  forces  in  such  a  contest  as  this  as  more 
nearly  equal  than  we  are  apt  to  assume.  First,  we 
must  remember  that  a  nation  never  attacks  one  of  twice 
its  population,  unless  in  some  way  it  has  a  full  compen 
sation  for  this  discrepancy.  In  the  present  case,  we 
know  that,  when  Sumter  was  attacked,  the  South  was 
armed,  the  North  unarmed  ;  in  the  next  place,  the  re 
possession  of  its  lost  integrity  and  wrested  property 
made  it  necessary  for  the  United  States  to  take  the 
quasi  attitude  of  an  invader,  and  the  real  disabilities 
of  fighting  on  an  unfamiliar  soil.  Under  the  circum 
stances,  it  would  have  required  an  army  at  Manasses 
of  200,000  men  to  have  made  us  equal  in  physical  force 
to  the  Southern  army  there.  Secondly,  we  are  to  re 
member  that  the  very  discrepancy  in  numbers  and 
wealth  between  belligerents,  whilst  it  often  begets  a 
dangerous  sense  of  security  in  the  stronger  party,  inva 
riably  leads  the  weaker  to  the  fullest  tension  of  every 
nerve  and  sinew,  and  the  levying  on  every  resource,  how 
ever  unusual.  From  these  considerations,  we  see  the 
plain  natural  causes  for  the  seeming  paradoxes  to  which 
attention  has  been  called.  We  must  more  and  more  fix 
it  in  our  minds  that  size  and  power  are  by  no  means 
convertible  terms  or  facts.  A  hornet  is  more  than  a 
match  for  a  wolf.  Emerson's  epigram  reminds  us, 

"  Foxes  are  so  cunning 
Because  they  are  not  strong." 

In  nature,  weakness  itself  frequently  becomes  a  source 
of  strength  ;  liability  and  clanger  make  the  eye  quicker, 


A  REBELLION  vs.    A   REVOLUTION.  75 

the  paw  more  velvety ;  wild  animals  become  more  spite 
ful  and  deadly  as  they  are  smaller ;  the  inhabitants  of 
the  tropics  dread  the  roar  of  the  lion  less  than  the  scent 
of  the  vinegar-bug.  Already  we  have  seen  the  law  thus 
suggested  borne  out  at  the  South  in  the  effort  to  poison 
our  troops  ;  in  the  spying  of  important  facts  under  flags 
of  truce ;  in  their  confinement  of  the  war,  so  far  as  they 
could,  to  the  plan  of  the  moccason, — picking  off  at  night, 
ambuscade,  masked  battery,  and  the  use  of  our  own 
flag  to  protect  themselves  and  seduce  our  men  into 
their  trap. 

When  our  army  has  fully  learned  the  lessons,  —  mor 
al  and  military,  —  the  chaplain  may  preach  on  his  text, 
"  Manasseh  is  mine  "  ;  it  will  be  ours  in  a  more  impor 
tant  sense  than  if  our  flag  waved  over  it  to-day. 


XIV. 

A    REBELLION    vs.    A    REVOLUTION. 

THERE  has  been  a  general  confusion  in  the  minds  of 
both  parties  as  to  their  historical  and  moral  position  in 
this  conflict.  They  of  the  South  have  claimed  that 
they  are  revolutionists,  and  justify  themselves  under 
the  right  of  revolution.  Many  of  the  North  have  ac 
cepted  the  terms,  justly  reasoning  that  the  right  of 


76  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

revolution  implies  an  interest,  and  possibly,  as  now,  a 
duty  pledged  to  prevent  it.  Revolution  depends  for  its 
dignity  and  heroism  purely  upon  the  worth  and  justice 
of  its  cause  ;  for,  as  all  would  applaud  a  child's  resist 
ance  to  his  father  when  that  father  demanded  of  it  some 
dishonorable  act,  so  all  would  cry  shame  on  the  violent 
rebellion  against  a  kind  and  good  parent.  Had  our 
American  Revolution  been  for  the  purpose  of  forming 
our  Colonies  into  a  band  of  robbers  and  pirates,  no  Pitt 
would  have  been  found  to  plead  our  cause,  no  Lafayette 
to  fight  our  battles.  Revolution,  in  an  unjust  cause,  is 
only  an  inauguration  of  bloodshed  and  assassination. 

Therefore  it  is  wrongly  called  Revolution.  Revolu 
tion  is  a  word  nearly  related  to  Evolution,  and  indi 
cates  the  normal  and  healthy  progression  of  the  world 
on  the  prescribed  orbit  of  civilization ;  pangs  it  may 
have,  but  they  are  the  precious  pangs  of  birth  into 
life ;  it  may  wring  tears,  but  each  tear  falls  in  blessed 
light,  and  gives  some  tint  to  the  bow  that  halos  the 
world.  Revolution  has  marched  on  with  the  advan 
cing  world,  and  with  it  the  fire  of  war  and  the  cloud 
of  sorrow  ;  but  its  fire  and  cloud  have  been  pillars 
leading  on  to  Humanity's  Promised  Lands. 

Those  who  have  set  themselves  against  these  revo 
lutions  —  the  normal  steps  of  human  progression  - 
have  been  always  the  Pharaohs,  Hapsburgs,  Philip  the 
Seconds,  George  the  Thirds,  and  Bombas ;  —  their  use 
being  always  the  negative  one  of  making  each  advance 
more  thorough  by  making  it  difficult  and  costly ;  their 


A  REBELLION  vs.   A  REVOLUTION.  77 

destiny  always  to  fail  in  the  end  to  suppress  the  new 
germ.  So  if  this  were  a  revolution  in  the  South,  this 
nation  would  now,  ere  its  own  majority  is  reached,  be 
standing  in  the  position  of  the  hard  Pharaoh  and  the 
Egyptian  taskmasters  toward  the  Israeli tish  bondmen, 
—  and  actually  in  the  same  relation  to  the  South  that 
George  the  Third  so  lately  held  toward  itself! 

The  South  claims  that  this  is  the  true  attitude  in 
which  the  parties  stand,  and  bids  us  prepare  for  the 
fate  that  has  ever  overtaken  the  obstinate  oppressor. 

On  the  surface,  and  for  the  moment,  the  South  is 
right  in  this.  So  long  as  the  position  of  our  govern 
ment  is  purely  political,  —  so  long  as  it  remains,  as 
now,  a  question  of  government  against  government, 
of  authority  against  authority,  —  we  are  their  obstinate 
George  the  Third,  and  on  that  count  we  are  already 
partially,  and  in  the  end  will  be  completely,  nonsuited. 

But  this  defeat  will  be  our  real  success,  for  it  will 
drive  us  from  our  present  untenable  fortress  to  that 
which  the  ages  have  reared  for  us,  and  whose  guns 
command  the  continent  and  the  world.  RIGHT  com 
mands  all  trenches,  even  those  of  Liberty ;  and  to  it  is 
assigned  the  power  of  silencing  the  batteries  that  de 
fend  the  liberty  of  Wrong  under  whatever  mask  of 
Independence  it  may  hide.  Men  fighting  for  their 
"  altars  "  are  strong ;  but  if  on  those  altars  human  vic 
tims  lie  bleeding,  they  are  weaker  than  those  who 
come  to  rescue  those  victims. 

Behind  the  national  army  now  in  the  field  there 

7 


78  THE  KEJECTED   STONE. 

stands  in  the  shadow  another,  silent  and  waiting.  As 
yet  it  is  refused.  Not  until  other  defeats,  and  an  ex 
haustion  of  other  reinforcements,  will  these  reinforce 
ments  be  called  on.  They  can  calmly  wait,  for  they 
are  not  three-years  men,  they  are  eternity  men.  The 
South  already  sees  them  behind  there,  more  terrible 
than  an  army  with  banners ;  they  desire  to  settle  the 
war  before  this  second  army  takes  the  sword. 

For  they  know  that  really  the  revolution  is  on  our 
side,  and  that  as  soon  as  the  nation  feels  that,  and 
acts  upon  it,  the  strength  of  the  South  is  gone.  In 
that  moment  they  become  the  Pharaohs  and  taskmas 
ters,  and  America  the  revolutionary  Israel,  bursting 
their  fetters,  scorning  their  flesh-pots,  and  going  forth 
in  the  strength  of  Israel's  God  to  inherit  the  land  de 
clared  unto  their  fathers. 

WE  ARE  THE  REVOLUTIONISTS.  It  was  the  revolution 
of  the  American  nation  that  made  this  war  necessary ; 
the  South  stands  relatively  where  it  always  stood,  and 
where  the  tyrant  has  stood  since  the  world  began. 
This  is  true,  not  in  any  fanciful  or  strained  sense, 
but  in  the  simplest  and  most  direct  sense.  Slavery 
has  always  ruled  this  country.  As  soon  as  a  seat  of 
power  was  reared,  Slavery  assumed  it.  Its  rod  was 
extended  over  the  lot  of  the  righteous,  and  they  put 
forth  their  hands  to  iniquity.  It  ruled  commerce,  it 
expunged  the  truth  of  history,  it  brought  its  Index 
Expurgatorius  on  the  page  of  school-book  and  prayer- 
book.  •  Scholars  wrote  for  it,  divines  preached  for  it; 


A  REBELLION  vs.  A  REVOLUTION.  79 

it  clasped  the  Bible  with  handcuffs  and  festooned  the 
Cross  of  Christ  with  chains. 

Its  tyranny  was  over  the  North.  In  the  South  was 
its  throne  ;  the  Southerners  were  its  royal  family  ;  on 
the  North  was  laid  its  rod  of  iron.  Under  it  their 
great  men  bowed  low,  licking  the  dust  from  the  tyrant's 
foot,  and  getting  in  return  his  imperial  kick.  Did  a 
minister  plead  for  Liberty  ?  Slavery  commanded  that 
he  should  be  exiled  from  his  pulpit,  and  his  family  live 
on  a  crust  of  bread.  So  it  ordered  when  Dudley  Tyng 
"  stood  up  for  "  the  Christ  of  to-day  with  the  scourges 
on  his  back,  and  sent  to  take  his  place  in  a  Northern 
pulpit  a  South-Carolinian,  to  plot  against  the  nation 
whilst  in  that  pulpit.  Did  any  Senator  speak  for  Free 
dom  ?  He  was  avoided  as  a  leper,  or  stricken  down  in 
his  place.  The  North  was  made  to  plait  the  lashes 
for  its  own  back,  to  forge  the  chains  for  its  own  limbs  ; 
the  men  whom  she  furnished,  and  who  were  called 
Presidents  and  Representatives,  were  not  Presidents 
nor  Representatives,  but  minions  and  crawling  cour 
tiers,  sitting  under  the  footstool  of  Slavery.  None 
could  be  trusted.  Head  after  head  even  of  the  noblest 
was  laid  low,  as  if  there  were  a  dry-rot  among  men. 
The  dog-star  reigned  and  raged,  and  the  best  man 
could  scarcely  tell  whether  he  would  not  be  a  slave- 
hound  before  night.  We  had  no  country.  In  pro 
portion  as  we  were  real  men  our  country  sank  and 
hardened  about  us  into  a  cold  dungeon,  where  we  lay 
chilled  and  chained,  with  vermin  creeping  over  us. 


80  THE  REJECTED   STOXE. 

Against  this  Tyrant  America  at  last  inaugurated  a  rev 
olution.  Slowly  and  with  many  disparagements  the  fee 
ble  cause  of  Liberty  prepared  for  a  final  struggle.  Her 
pulses  beat  low,  her  heart-throbs  are  faint ;  she  is  only 
not  crushed  because  purblind  oppression  imagines  the 
life  already,  or  nearly,  ebbed  out.  But  an  old  fire, 
that  was  in  deep  alliance  with  the  central  heats  of  the 
earth,  and  under  which  old  Wrong  had  again  and 
again  shrivelled  like  a  burnt  scroll,  yet  lingered  in 
her  heart.  Anon  the  flame  leapt  out  at  eye  and 
tongue  ;  and  despite  the  play  of  the  engines,  despite 
the  cold  water-jets  sent  from  pulpit  and  press  and  so 
ciety  and  office,  the  winds  of  Heaven  fanned  that  flame 
until  the  parties  were  consumed,  the  political  elements 
melted*  with  fervent  heat,  and  Slavery  compelled  to 
begin  the  world  over  again,  and  rebuild  its  throne  over 
those  ashes  if  it  could  ! 

It  was  the  noblest  revolution  the  world  ever  saw 
that  placed  Abraham  Lincoln  in  the  White  House  at 
Washington  ;  the  noblest,  because  the  first  ever  known 
upon  this  planet  where  the  legitimate  weapons  of  Truth 
were  alone  used.  These  mighty  strongholds  yielded 
to  the  voices,  the  persuasions,  the  reasons,  of  earnest 
and  just  men  ;  they  were  besieged  with  arrows  of 
light,  shelled  with  the  bombs  of  Free  School  and 
Free  Thought.  "  Love  is  the  hell-spark  that  burneth 
up  the  mountain  of  Iniquity,"  said  Mohammed.  So 
also  have  we  found  it ;  besides  those  who  truckled  to 
Slavery  with  mean  motives,  there  were  many  fond 


A  REBELLION  vs.  A  REVOLUTION.  81 

and  simple  souls,  who  could  "  think  no  evil,"  were 
it  of  the  Devil,  and  these  yielded  to  Slavery  that  vast 
extent  of  rope  wherewith,  when  attained,  rogues  do 
proverbially  hang  themselves.  And  thus  the  revolu 
tion,  without  the  firing  of  a  gun  from  the  side  of  the 
revolutionists,  had  gone  on,  until  the  steps  of  Freedom 
were  on  the  threshold  of  a  liberated  and  redeemed 
New  World.  The  dayspring  from  on  high  had  already 
visited  us  ;  the  banner  which  had  fallen  out  of  the  sky 
to  blazon  itself  only  in  the  scars  and  stripes  on  the 
slave's  back,  or  on  some  weaker  nation  beside  us, 
once  more  floated  up,  and  promised  to  symbolize,  as 
of  old,  the  streaks  of  Humanity's  advancing  day. 

The  Southern  movement  is,  then,  not  a  revolution, 
but  a  rebellion  against  the  noblest  of  revolutions.  It 
is  a  league  of  confederates  against  the  peaceful  and 
legal  evolution  of  Liberty  on  this  continent.  It  is 
an  Insurrection  against  a  Resurrection.  It  is  Slavery, 
hoary  tyrant  of  the  ages,  standing  before  Humanity's 
morning,  lifting  its  bars  against  the  day-streaks,  and 
crying,  "  Back  !  back,  accursed  Dawn,  into  the  cham 
bers  of  Night !  " 

The  instinct  of  Slavery  has  probed  this  matter  very 
accurately.  They  know  that  sunrise  does  not  respect 
the  protest  of  owl  and  bat  against  it.  They  have  dis 
covered  that  the  North  Star  is  a  kind  of  Ossawattomie 
star,  refusing  to  stop  its  light  at  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line,  sending  its  incendiary  ray  far  down  into  cane- 

7* 


82  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

brake  and  dismal  swamp,  finding  many  a  poor  fugitive 
to  hold  with  its  glittering  eye  until  he  is  safe  in  the  land 
of  freedom.  They  know  that  the  sunlight  will  not  re 
spect  the  sacred  soil,  and  that  their  only  hope  is  in  see 
ing  that  it  shall  shine  through  "  Bars."  They  scarcely 
rebelled  in  time ;  they  will  have  hard  work  building 
the  northward  wall  of  their  fortress  in  time  to  resist  the 
arrows  of  Phoebus.  But  they  are  doing  their  best. 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  however,  for  us  to  suppose  that 
they  wish  to  subjugate  the  North.  They  have  no  desire 
to  cast  themselves  straight  across  the  railroad  where 
the  train  of  civilization  must  pass.  It  is  true  that  all 
they  desire  is  to  be  let  alone.  But  what  does  it  imply 
to  let  them  alone  ?  It  implies  that  a  nation  which  has 
heard  at  the  door  of  its  sepulchre  the  divine  mandate, 
"  Come  forth  !  "  and  whose  hands  and  feet  and  face  are 
already  half  divested  of  their  grave-clothes,  shall  sink 
back  again  to  decay,  take  again  the  napkin  about  its 
face,  surrender  its  tissues  again  to  the  worm.  There 
is  not  one  healthy  movement  of  a  free  nation,  not  one 
word  or  step,  however  innocent  and  unconscious,  which 
can  by  any  possibility  let  Slavery  alone.  Slavery  knows 
they  cannot  if  it  is  united  with  them  in  one  nation  ;  it 
would  discover,  if  separated,  that  civilization  is  no  red- 
tapist,  and  that  free  America  cannot  let  oppression  in 
the  South  alone,  more  than  it  can  let  it  alone  in  the 
Old  World.  Plutarch  tells  us  that  Bessus,  the  Pgeonian, 
destroyed  a  nest  of  sparrows  with  cruelty ;  and,  being 
reproached  with  this  wantonness,  replied,  that  he  de- 


A  REBELLION  vs.   A  REVOLUTION.  83 

-/ 

stroyed  them  justly,  since  they  constantly  reproached 
him  untruthfully  with  the  murder  of  his  father.  Thus 
he  disclosed  his  crime.  What  the  twittering  of  inno 
cent  sparrows  was  to  the  parricide,  such  must  forever 
be  the  natural  influences  of  Liberty  —  its  free  schools, 
its  free  speech,  its  material  progress  —  to  parricidal 
Wrong  the  world  over.  Let  us  not  wonder  if  the 
tyrannies  of  the  Old  World  smile  complacently  at  the 
attempt  of  the  Southern  Bessus  to  destroy  the  brood 
of  Liberty  in  America.  Freedom  will  never  let  them 
alone,  will  never  cease  to  accuse  them,  will  forever 
proclaim  from  the  house-top  the  crimes  they  have  com 
mitted  in  the  cellars  and  closets. 

When  Lieut.  Maury  came  down  from  the  dome  of 
the  United  States  Observatory,  where  for  so  many  years 
he  had  watched  the  stars  to  so  little  purpose,  —  never 
having  discovered  how  they  in  their  courses  forever 
"fight  against  Sisera," — to  bend  all  he  had  learned 
there  to  the  behest  of  Slavery,  the  first  evidence  the 
country  had  of  his  treachery  was  that  the  light-houses 
all  along  the  coast  were  darkened.  It  was  well.  JT  is 
an  exact  symbol  of  what  the  Confederacy  to  which  he 
had  attached  himself  means.  To  quench  all  the  lights 
which  guide  Humanity ;  to  darken  every  guiding  beacon 
to  which  the  voyagers  in  the  ancient  Night  are  looking ; 
to  extinguish  every  hope  lit  up  on  the  shores  of  the 
Future,  —  that  is  their  design.  "  Darken  the  light 
houses  !  "  cry  the  wreckers  of  Humanity.  "  Let  no  ray 
shine  out  upon  the  night  of  oppression  !  Let  the  brave 


84  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

A 

ships  with  their  immortal  freightage  be  dashed  upon  the 
breakers ;  for  so  alone  can  their  treasures  gild  the  coast 
of  Slavery  !  " 

Shall  we  now  spend  our  blood,  our  time,  our  strength, 
fighting  with  Slavery  for  the  treasures  dragged  from 
the  waves,  —  wrecker  against  wrecker  ?  In  that  they 
will  be  ahead  of  us ;  their  drags  and  nets  of  spoil  are 
longer  and  better,  their  eagerness  for  their  prey  greater. 
Shall  we  rekindle  those  extinguished  light-houses  ?  shall 
we  see  that,  all  along  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  and 
the  Gulf,  the  rays  of  Freedom  and  Justice  to  all  shine 
out  clear  and  beautifulr  marking  for  every  struggling 
bark  —  for  Germany,  Hungary,  Poland,  for  all  —  a  path 
of  light  to  a  haven  of  safety  and  rest  ?  Then  we  save 
the  wrecker  and  the  wrecked.  We  kindle  lights  that 
shine  not  only  outward  upon  those  ready  to  perish  in 
the  stormy  waves  of  Old  World  oppression,  but  inward 
upon  our  more  pitiable  fellow-men,  wandering  in  the 
darkness  of  crime,  morally  wrecked  on  the  rocks  of 
barbarism,  because  America  has  hitherto  failed  to  pro 
vide  with  the  light-houses  of  trade  and  power  those  of 
national  righteousness  and  honor. 

Thus  and  thus  alone  we  cease  to  be  in  the  seat  of 
George  the  Third,  fighting  against  the  bud  that  by  nor 
mal  growth  would  grow  from  our  side  and  climb  to  its 
fruitage.  We  ourselves  become  revolutionists  against 
our  own  wrong.  We  emerge  from  the  ancient  king 
dom  of  Oppression,  and  make  this  a  holy  war,  —  a  sec 
ond  Revolution  achieving  for  the  nations  of  the  world 
what  our  first  achieved  for  thirteen  colonies. 


EXCALIBUR.  85 

XV. 

EXCALIBUR. 

THE  centuries  as  they  roll  bring  no  season  without 
its  fresh  laurel  for  the  brow  of  King  Arthur.  The  sun 
never  rises  and  sets,  but  it  leaves  some  new  gleam  of 
light  on  the  jewelled  hilt,  on  the  fine-tempered  blade, 
of  Excalibur,  —  sword  of  Arthur,  "  flower  of  kings." 

There  came  a  day  when  out  of  the  boiling  sea  a 
great  hand  emerged,  holding  out  this  sword,  with  an 
inscription  which  declared  its  name,  and  its  power,  if 
wielded  by  its  true  king,  to  cut  through  iron  or  steel, 
or  conquer  the  strongest  foe.  It  was  given  to  Arthur ; 
for  was  not  he  its  true  king  who  stood  for  justice,  for 
honor,  for  the  weak  and  wronged? 

The  virtue  of  the  sword,  as  its  name  indicates,  lay 
in  its  Calibre.  It  was  no  larger  than  other  swords ; 
but  its  quality  was  finer.  Character  is  more  than 
size,  and  the  sword  that  defends  the  innocent  and  the 
wronged  must  in  the  end  win  the  day.  So,  in  the 
hand  of  Arthur,  Excalibur  never  failed. 

At  length  the  noble  King  Arthur  drew  near  his  end. 
Then  went  he,  with  one  of  his  knights,  near  to  the  sea, 
and  Excalibur  was  cast  therein :  again  the  great  white 
hand  emerged  and  caught  the  sword.  The  legend  runs, 
that  soon  afterward  the  king  himself  was  borne  away 
to  some  happy  isle  by  nymphs.  But  he  never  died. 


Ob  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

And  the  prophecies  remained,  that  when  his  race  —  our 
race  —  shall  be  worthy  to  receive  him,  King  Arthur, 
the  Imperishable,  shall  return,  bringing  with  him  Ex- 
calibur  the  Unconquerable. 

All  along  the  line  of  our  army  —  from  the  Chesa 
peake  to  the  Missouri  —  many  eyes  have  strained  to 
meet  one  like  thine,  0  Arthur,  flower  of  kings !  We 
have  watched  night  and  day,  if  through  the  dust  and 
smoke  of  any  conflict  we  could  see  the  trusty  Excalibur 
flashing  in  the  light.  It  is  not  there :  so  we  gain  or 
lose  as  the  fortune  of  war  may  decide.  With  Excalibur 
there  is  no  Chance,  but  Certainty. 

When  we  are  worthy  to  receive  him ;  when  we 
stand  true  Knights  of  Humanity ;  when  we  have  set 
our  hearts  to  strike  for  the  innocent  and  wronged  ; 
when  we  have  bound  ourselves  in  a  holy  compact,  as  a 
Legion  of  Honor,  to  strike  down  those  who  raise  them 
selves  upon  the  weak,  —  then  the  royal  Soul  of  our 
race  shall  rise  and  return  to  lead  us,  and  the  sword 
that  never  failed  shall  carve  the  patli  of  our  victory 
through  every  "  bar,"  and  bring  back  the  thirty-two 
stars  as  jewels  in  its  hilt. 

As  yet  the  watchers  must  sit  by  the  foaming,  seething 
sea  of  events,  awaiting  the  great  hand,  and  the  sword 
which  alone  can  win  the  day  for  America.  Not  yet, 
not  yet.  As  yet  our  leaders  turn  their  faces  from  the 
hunted  fugitive,  even  if  forced  to  receive  him ;  as  yet 
the  soldier's  sword  has  not  the  calibre  to  carve  the  iron 
of  the  slave's  manacle.  When  our  Anglo-Saxon  blood 


EXCALIBUK.  87 

mounts  to  its  royal  height,  and  grasps  its  final,  noblest 
weapon,  four  million  chains  will  fall,  —  nay,  six  million 
hearts,  whose  drugged  blood  owns  the  same  fountain 
with  ours,  will  cast  off  the  virus  which  has  maddened 
them,  and  every  State  hasten  as  a  Knight  to  the  Table 
where  Arthur  reigns. 

Why  does  not  this  nation  at  once  draw  this  sword  ? 
Why  does  it  not,  owning  what  is  whispered  in  every 
heart,  that  this  war  means  freedom  for  all  or  chains  for 
ally  at  once  inscribe  EMANCIPATION  on  its  banner  ? 

No  one  questions  that  Slavery  is  the  cause  of  this 
rebellion. 

No  one  questions  that  to  recover  the  Union  as  it  was 

—  i.  e.  with  slavery  in  it  —  is  to  recover  the  elements 
that  have  led  to  this  collision,  and  must  bring  it  on 
again  whenever  the  slave  interest  thinks  itself  strong 
enough  for  another  effort. 

No  one  questions  but  that  the  only  alternative  of  this 
will  be  the  subjugation  of  the  North  in  a  moral  sense, 

—  the  suspension  over  the  ballot-box  of  the  hair-strung 
sword  of  Civil  War,  so  that  Fear,  and  not  Conviction, 
shall  decide  every  election. 

No  one  questions  that  Slavery  is  the  one  stain  and 
blot  which  disgraces  our  flag  and  cripples  our  progress, 
and  that,  but  for  the  protection  given  it  by  the  Consti 
tution,  the  nation  should  and  would  have  abolished  it 
forever. 

No  one  questions  that,  by  the  appeal  which  Slavery 


88  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

lias  made  to  an  arbitrament  beside  the  Constitution, 
compelling  the  temporary  obedience  to  military  law 
and  military  necessity,  by  which  the  Constitution  itself 
has  provided  for  its  own  possible  suspension,  our 
nation  has  a  right  to  strike  at  the  very  root  of  the 
evil,  which,  so  long  as  it  remained  subject  to  the 
Constitution,  it  must  protect. 

No  one  questions  the  position  of  John  Quincy 
Adams,  that  the  power  to  abolish  Slavery  is  con 
tained  in  the  War  power. 

Yet  in  this  War  law  has  been  as  often  suspended 
in  favor  of  Slavery  as  against  it ;  for  it  is  a  direct 
violation  of  law  for  one  of  our  soldiers  or  military 
officers  to  return  a  fugitive  slave,  such  return  being 
provided  for  in  due  form  of  law,  and  assigned  to 
appointed  civil  officers.  Where,  by  the  growing  com 
pulsion  of  events,  our  government  has  been  compelled 
to  liberate  slaves,  it  has  done  so  with  all  the  tender- 
ness  for  the  South  that  a  mother  might  show  for  her 
pet  babe.  To-day  comes  the  news  that,  by  a  final 
decision,  escaping  slaves  shall  be  retained,  whether 
belonging  to  loyal  or  disloyal ;  but,  as  if  frightened 
at  reaching  this  dizzy  height  of  resolution,  the  order 
of  the  Secretary  of  War  immediately  provides  that 
any  slave  wishing  to  return  to  the  service  from  which 
he  has  escaped  shall  have  no  let  or  hindrance  !  We 
quote  this,  not  as  an  instance  of  unfaithfulness  to 
Freedom,  but  as  an  example  of  the  infatuation  and 
terror  which  seem  to  seize  upon  and  confuse  all  our 


EXCALIBUR.  89 

public  men,  when  they  touch  this  question  of  property 
in  man.  Any  one  whose  wits  are  about  him  can  see 
that,  by  this  order,  any  treacherous  Negro  of  Gover 
nor  Letcher's  household  may  be  bribed  into  escaping 
to  Fortress  Monroe,  and,  after  suitable  observations, 
"  voluntarily  return,"  to  give  such  information  as,  at 
Manasses,  the  rebels  had,  by  their  own  account,  to 
pay  8100,000  for. 

Why  this  timidity  ?  Why  this  overweening  tender 
ness  with  human  bondage  ?  One  would  suppose  that 
a  system,  repulsive  to  all  the  instincts  of  Humanity, 
which  can  exist  only  by  a  toleration  almost  barbaric, 
would  be  at  once  crushed  when  it  became  an  outlaw 
and  a  foe  ;  but  here  we  are,  pirouetting  amongst  its 
interests  as  daintily  as  Mignon  among  the  eggs  she 
dare  not  break.  Wherefore  ? 

Not  because  any  member  of  this  Administration 
loves  Slavery,  but  because  the  government  fears  to 
divide  its  physical  forces  ;  that  is,  to  alienate  certain 
persons  in  the  North  and  (supposed)  in  the  South 
from  the  cause  of  the  Union  itself,  as  separate  from 
the  Slavery  question.  In  fact,  for  the  sake  of  certain 
persons  who,  in  case  of  a  direct  issue  between  the 
American  Union  and  Slavery,  would  take  sides  with 
Slavery. 

But  if  such  men  should,  unwashed,  put  forth  their 
hands  to  defend  the  Union,  would  it  not  be  a  sure 
proof  that  it  would  be  the  old  tar-and-feather  Union, 
—  a  Union  not  fit  to  be  saved  ? 

8 


90  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

Unto  their  assembly,  mine  honor,  be  not  thou 
united  ! 

Indeed  it  is,  in  the  eyes  of  every  lover  of  universal 
Freedom,  the  highest  mission  of  this  conflict  to  liberate 
this  land  from  the  influence  of  that  vile  Northern 
Mephistopheles,  the  party  which  has  in  every  way 
fostered  the  arrogance  of  Slavery,  and  encouraged 
the  madness  of  the  South,  which  it  is  now  forced 
to  abandon  in  the  conflict  to  which  it  has  seduced 
that  misguided  section.  The  guilt  of  this  rebellion 
is  not  heaviest  on  Dixie's  Land,  by  any  means. 

These  tories  would  be  a  drag  and  a  curse  to  our 
side,  if  they  should  espouse  it.  The  hearts  of  freemen 
the  world  over  would  shrink  back  chilled  and  dis 
trustful. 

"  We  shall  march  conquering,  —  not  through  their  presence  ; 
Songs  shall  inspirit  us,  —  not  from  their  lyre; 
Deeds  shall  be  done,  —  whilst  they  boast  their  quiescence, 
Still  bidding  crouch  whom  the  rest  bade  aspire." 


A   FELICITATION.  91 

XVI. 

A    FELICITATION. 

IN  the  pecuniary  crisis  of  1857,  Stackpole,  on  Lear- 
ing  that  a  certain  bank  had  gone  under,  exclaimed, 
"  Bully  for  that  bank ! "  His  astonished  auditors 
asked  why  his  admiration  was  elicited  for  a  bank  that 
had  just  broken.  "  Broke !  "  exclaimed  Stackpole, 
amazed  at  their  stupidity ;  "  well,  why  should  n't  it 
break  ?  What  else  were  banks  made  for  ?  But  see 
how  long  it  held  out,  —  fourteen  days!  That's  what 
I  call  a  bully  bank ! " 

Perhaps  on  the  same  principle  we  should  say,  "  Bully 
for  the  Democratic  party !  "  Of  course  we  expected  it 
to  go  for  the  South  in  the  end.  What  else  was  it 
meant  for?  We  were  scarcely  so  green  as  to  expect 
that  Slavery's  Northern  factotum  would  ever  seriously 
pass  through  a  crisis  involving  a  cessation,  even  tem 
porary,  of  such  stated  religious  services  as  the  abuse 
of  the  North  and  glowing  eulogy  of  the  South,  to  say 
nothing  of  having  such  a  means  of  grace  as  hunting 
fugitive  humanity  for  our  Southern  brethren  disturbed 
by  the  "  contraband"  neology,  without  breaking  down. 
We  had  from  the  first  prepared  our  ears  to  hear  a 
chorus  of  somewhat  cracked  voices  singing  the  plain 
tive  melody,  "Carry  me  back!"  This  was  en  regie. 
It  was  what  the  metaphysicians  call  the  "  structural 
and  normal  development  of  its  central  idea." 


92  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

But,  on  the  whole,  we  feel  a  disposition  to  be  duly 
thankful  at  the  result.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
party  held  out  pretty  well.  It  has  failed  at  last,  but 
not  without  losing  many  of  its  most  talented  leaders, 
and  being  fearfully  decimated  in  numbers.  It  has  not 
even  enjoyed  the  delight  of  corning  out  in  an  open 
licking  of  its  quondam  master's  hand.  "Hypocrisy," 
says  the  French  satirist,  "  is  the  homage  that  vice 
pays  to  virtue."  The  South  is  too  shrewd  not  to  see 
that  the  quasi  support  of  this  government  under  which 
the  party  conventions  have  found  it  necessary  to  con 
ceal  the  poison  they  would  administer,  is  an  attestation 
of  the  true  temper  of  the  masses  they  hope  to  control, 
the  homage  that  disloyalty  finds  it  necessary  to  pay  to 
the  throned  patriotism  of  the  people. 

There  is  really  no  cause  for  apprehending  any  evil 
from  these  sitters  on  the  fence.  In  due  time,  as  we 
have  said,  the  fence  will  be  so  sharp,  that  those  who 
try  it  will  be  cut  in  two.  But  meanwhile  it  may  be 
held  as  a  general  truth,  that  those  who  have  not  the 
courage  to  take  a  stand  on  either  side  will  scarcely 
have  courage  or  strength  to  help  our  cause,  if  they 
should  adopt  it.  On  looking  over  the  early  chronicles 
of  our  first  Revolution,  we  find  that  our  earnest  and 
patriotic  fathers  had  to  contend  with  a  vast  deal  more 
of  disloyalty  than  we  have  now.  The  historians  give 
us  evidence  that,  even  so  late  as  after  the  destruction 
of  tea  in  Boston  harbor,  a  man  might  have  been 
roughly  handled  in  Boston  who  should  have  advo- 


A  FELICITATION.  93 

cated  a  complete  separation  from  England.  It  was 
some  time  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  that  this 
(separation)  became  an  avowed  object  of  the  war. 
More  people  in  this  country  are  now  to  be  found  who 
advocate  a  complete  casting  off  of  the  yoke  of  Slavery, 
than  at  the  same  stage  of  the  first  Revolution  were  in 
favor  of  casting  off  the  yoke  of  England.  And  just 
in  the  proportion  that,  under  the  tuition  of  events, 
our  country  then  rose  to  greater  earnestness  and 
bolder  steps,  the  number  of  sycophant  Tories  increased 
all  over  the  country.  Some  of  the  most  fearful  scenes 
of  bloodshed  occurred  between  the  Revolutionists  and 
the  Tories. 

Now  see  how  much  better  we  are  off.  Yal.  and 
Breck.  are  protected  in  Washington  by  their  very 
insignificance.  The  Tory  Conventions,  with  all  their 
pusillanimous  talk,  are  to-day  regarded  by  the  best 
men  of  the  party  they  claim  to  represent  as  only 
the  hanging  out  of  crape  upon  its  door,  to  indicate 
that  the  pulses  of  the  living  no  longer  beat  through 
its  veins. 

There  is  one  —  and  only  one  —  way  in  which  these 
Northern  Tories  and  dapper  neutrals  can  work  us  an 
injury ;  and  that  is  by  being  regarded  by  our  Govern 
ment  at  Washington  as  a  party  worthy  to  be  considered 
in  any  of  its  measures,  or  of  any  effort  at  its  concilia 
tion.  Let  our  government  have  no  Mrs.  Grundy  after 
whose  opinions  to  inquire  in  the  solemn  emergency. 
Let  it  be  brave  and  earnest,  knowing  that  the  great 
8* 


94  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

heart  of  the  people  moves  with  it ;  knowing,  too,  that 
in  these  high  magnetic  conditions  the  people  see  very 
shrewdly  into  affairs.  It  is  through  inattention  or  in 
difference  that  they  are  usually  hoodwinked  by  politi 
cians  ;  now  they  are  neither  inattentive  nor  indifferent ; 
and  the  demagogues  will  soon  find  that  it  is  they  who 
are  hoodwinked  in  thinking  so.  We  have  no  fear 
whatever  of  the  verdict  that  the  people  will  pass  upon 
the  contemptible  and  selfish  determination  of  these  men 
to  decline  all  exertion  to  save  the  temple  of  Liberty 
from  the  flames  that  threatened  to  envelop  it,  and  sit 
down  to  boil  their  party  pots  in  the  fire. 


XVII. 

TO   THE  PRESIDENT   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

HONORED  SIR  :  — 

From  the  many  conflicting  and  vague  statements 
with  which  the  telegraph  fills  the  air,  one  seems  to 
have  obtained  the  clearness  and  authenticity  of  a  fact, 
—  this,  namely,  that  GARIBALDI,  the  patriot  whose 
knightly  kiss  broke  the  evil  spell  which  bound  the 
Sleeping  Beauty  of  the  Meditteranean,  whose  sword 
has  carved  a  gateway  through  the  age-hardened  pris 
on-walls  of  Italy,  has  sent  word  to  America  :  If  this 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.     95 

ivar  is  for  Freedom,  I  come  with  twenty  thousand 
men. 

Garibaldi,  Sir,  is  a  symbol.  The  spirit  of  this  age 
lias  produced  him ;  and  millions  in  every  land  recog 
nize  in  him  the  appearance  in  our  age  of  the  Fore 
runner,  —  the  Yoice  in  the  Wilderness  that  has  never 
failed  any  age,  and  that  cries  now  as  of  old,  "  Prepare 
ye  the  way  of  the  Lord ;  make  his  paths  straight. 
And  now  also  the  axe  is  laid  to  the  root  of  the  tree ; 
every  tree  that  bringeth  not  forth  good  fruit  is  hewn 
down  and  cast  into  the  fire ! " 

There  are  also  in  our  midst  other  symbols.  Never 
was  there  a  Moses  without  his  Pharaoh ;  never  a 
John  without  his  Herod.  We  have  a  party  that 
has  gained  a  certain  fictitious  strength  by  Wrong  and 
Deceit,  and  their  leaders  say :  "  As  soon  as  this  is  a 
war  for  Freedom,  we  leave  you,  taking  our  twenty 
thousand  men." 

Between  these  two  symbols  you  are  compelled  to 
choose,  —  Garibaldi  and  millions  of  Garibaldini  all 
over  the  world,  who  can  draw  no  sword  but  for  Jus 
tice  and  Liberty,  on  the  one  hand ;  and,  on  the  other, 
the  Pro-slavery  politicians  who  hate  Liberty  more  than 
all  else,  and  whose  half-hearted,  muttering  support  to 
this  government  is  given  only  in  the  ratio  of  that  gov 
ernment's  servility  to  Slavery.  As  Garibaldi  is  only 
known  as  the  hero  of  European  Liberty,  so  are  Yal- 
landigham,  Richmond,  &  Co.  known  only  for  the  ex 
tent  to  which  they  have  crawled  on  their  bellies  before 


96  THE   EEJECTED    STOXE. 

Slavery,  and  the  malignancy  with  which  they  have 
sought  to  wound  the  heel  of  Humanity.  To  accept 
one  of  these  parties  is  to  refuse  the  other. 

The  American  people  look  on  very  anxiously  to 
see  to  which  of  these  you  will  turn,  and  which  you 
will  consequently  make  up  your  mind  to  alienate. 
This  much  any  one  may  say  for  the  American  people. 
Further  than  this,  each  one  can  speak  only  for  him 
self;  and  since,  by  the  nature  of  our  institutions,  the 
responsibility  for  what  is  done  by  our  government 
must  be  shared  to  some  extent  by  the  humblest  in 
dividual,  it  becomes  the  solemn  duty  of  every  man 
who  has  an  earnest  conviction  to  utter  it,  as  it  is  of 
every  man  who  can  strike  a  blow  for  his  country  to 
strike  it. 

Now,  therefore,  I,  Sir,  the  writer  of  these  pages, 
who  have  seen  my  native  State,  the  natural  garden- 
spot  of  this  country,  withered  and  wasted  by  Slavery ; 
who  have  seen  its  race  of  honorable  and  upright  men 
disappear  before  a  population  of  pigmies ;  who,  exiled 
to  the  North,  have  seen  there  how  a  nation  can  turn 
from  its  great  birthright  to  be  warped  and  ruined  by 
receiving  into  its  system  a  great  moral  poison,  su 
gared  over  by  an  important  interest,  —  have  seen  there 
the  best  and  bravest  men  alienated  from,  and  enlisted 
against,  a  country  in  which  they  found  no  place  un 
less  their  most  sacred  convictions  were  laid  down  at 
the  threshold,  whilst  the  only  titles  to  places  of  trust 
or  power  were  supple  knee-joints  and  pliant  vertebra- 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.     97 

tion  ;  and  who,  having  known  these  things,  arose  one 
blessed  morning,  and,  invoking  the  benison  of  Heaven 
on  a  bit  of  paper  which  bore  the  name  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  cast  then  my  first  vote,  hoping  .that  it  might 
be  for  the  liberation  of  this  country  from  a  great  and 
dwarfing  crime,  —  do  now  implore  the  President  to 
accept  the  proffer  of  Giuseppo  Garibaldi,  and  thereby 
proclaim  to  the  world  that  this  country  links  its  des 
tiny  with  that  of  Universal  Freedom. 

The  only  test  of  our  good  faith  in  this  is  that  the 
world  shall  at  once  see  inscribed  on  our  banner,  IMME 
DIATE  AND  UNCONDITIONAL  EMANCIPATION. 

1.  It  is  legal.  Your  Excellency  is  sworn  to  execute 
the  laws,  therefore  you  cannot  even  consider  a  measure 
that  is  violative  of  the  Constitution  and  laws.  The 
Constitution  and  laws,  in  providing  for  possible  war, 
do  in  case  of  war  at  once  deliver  up  the  government 
to  the  laws  of  war ;  so  that  to  follow  the  letter  of  the 
Constitution  in  times  of  war,  when  military  law  and 
advantage  demanded  the  contrary,  would  be  violating 
the  Constitution.  There  are  times  when  the  Constitu 
tion  can  only  be  obeyed  by  its  temporary  suspension 
at  the  command  of  the  universal  and  necessary  code 
which,  in  common  with  the  organic  law  of  all  nations, 
it  recognizes.  The  suspension  of  the  Habeas  Corpus, 
and  the  discussion  which  followed  it,  have  made  it  per 
fectly  clear  to  the  people,  that  in  each  case  where  it  was 
suspended  it  would  have  been  unconstitutional  to  follow 
the  ordinary  provision  of  the  Constitution.  It  needs  no 


'  98  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

discussion  to  prove  that  the  same  laws  which  take  from 
a  traitor  the  ordinary  form  and  process  of  law,  may  de 
prive  an  institution  that  proves  traitorous  and  deadly 
to  the  country  of  its  ordinary  guaranties.  It  thus  be 
comes  simply  a  question  of  whether  Slavery  stands  in 
this  attitude  towards  the  country. 

2.  It  is  just.  The  South  would  destroy  the  Union 
in  the  interest  of  Slavery.  The  nation  must  destroy 
Slavery  in  the  interest  of  the  Union. 

In  the  interest  of  Slavery  the  territorial  integrity  of 
the  country  has  been  destroyed,  and  some  arms,  forts, 
and  money  seized.  Is  that  all  ?  If  so,  perhaps  the 
account  between  this  nation  and  Slavery  might  be  set 
tled  by  the  repentance  of  Slavery,  and  a  return  of  the 
stolen  articles. 

But  it  is  less  than  a  centime  of  the  account  which 
this  nation  holds  against  Slavery.  Years  of  usurpation 
and  corruption,  —  of  insults  and  abuses  heaped  upon 
Freedom  in  whatever  form  it  tried  to  maintain  its  slight 
foothold  on  the  continent,  —  years  now  summed  up  and 
culminant  in  a  frantic  civil  war,  involving  the  daily 
expenditure  of  millions,  the  perversion  of  the  means 
and  powers  of  the  people,  the  suspension  and  lasting 
injury  of  trade,  the  reinstating  of  piracy  on  the  high 
seas,  —  more  than  all,  the  death  of  vast  numbers  of  the 
youth  of  America,  and  the  draping  of  tens  of  thousands 
of  hitherto  happy  homes  ;  —  all  these  are  in  the  account 
that  this  nation  has  now  to  settle  with  Slavery.  Can 
they  be  repaid  by  the  conquest  of  what  forces  the  South 


TO   THE  PRESIDENT   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES.  99 

can  bring  into  the  field  ?  Will  it  be  enough  if  Slavery 
should  at  length  agree  to  ground  its  arms  until  it  is 
stronger  ?  Can  it  be  settled  by  a  truce  of  one  or  two 
or  ten  years  ?  Is  the  balance  struck,  if  we  have  the  old 
Union,  with  the  old  causes  at  work  in  it,  to  bring  forth 
like  results  in  the  future  ? 

Justice  can  be  satisfied  in  that  alone  which  satisfies 

Wisdom,  —  THE    UTTEE    DESTRUCTION    OF    SLAVERY.       Ill 

no  other  way  can  we  act  up  to  the  lessons  which 
Slavery  has  taught  us  of  its  own  blasting  nature  ;  in 
no  other  way  can  we  as  a  nation  obtain  that  blessing 
for  which  we  have  already  paid  the  full  price  in 
treasure  and  blood,  —  the  riddance  from  the  accursed 
evil  under  which  we  have  groaned  ever  since  we 
became  a  nation. 

This  is  justice  to  ourselves  ;  I  have  not  mentioned 
that  higher  justice  which  is  due  to  four  millions  of 
human  beings,  cruelly  deprived  of  "  the  right  to  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,"  which  our 
nation,  in  the  pure  aspirations  of  its  youth,  meant 
to  secure  for  all.  You  are  bound  to  stand  by  legal 
formulas.  Yet  I  cannot  forget  what  I  once  heard 
you  say,  with  luminous  words,  that  seemed  to  shine 
out  like  responses  to  the  everlasting  stars  that  then 
and  there  gleamed  above  you  :  "  Every  man  that 
comes  into  the  world  has  a  mouth  to  be  fed,  and  a 
back  to  be  clothed  ;  by  a  notable  coincidence,  each 
has  also  two  hands.  Now  I  take  it  that  those  hands 
were  meant  to  feed  that  mouth,  and  clothe  that  back  ; 


100  THE  EEJECTED   STOXE. 

and  any  institution  that  deprives  them  of  that  right,  and 
the  rights  deducible  from  it,  strikes  at  the  very  roots  of 
natural  justice,  which  is  also  political  wisdom." 

I  pray  you,  Mr.  President,  to  remember  that,  when 
the  laws  of  war  permit  you  to  restore  millions  to 
those  natural  rights,  every  day  that  they  remain 
thereafter  deprived  of  them  will  be  traceable  to  your 
own  door ! 

3.  It  is  merciful.  Not  only  merciful  to  the  slave, 
that  he  should  have  this  cruel  and  galling  yoke  that 
binds  him  to  the  plane  of  the  brute  removed  ;  not 
only  merciful  to  us,  that  the  heart-burnings  and  ani 
mosities  which  have  rent  our  land  should  be  laid  by 
the  eradication  of  their  cause  ;  not  only  merciful  to 
posterity,  that  this  fearful  and  irrepressible  source  of 
trouble  and  guilt  should  not  be  bequeathed  them  ;  - 
but  more  than  to  these  or  to  all  others,  a  decree  of 
emancipation  would  be  MERCIFUL  TO  THE  SOUTH  ! 

Up  from  broad  and  beautiful  plains,  worn  out  and 
desolate  ;  from  undrained  marshes  and  swamps,  whose 
very  wealth  has  turned  to  malaria  ;  from  the  locked 
treasures  of  gold  and  iron  in  Virginia  and  the  Caro- 
linas ;  from  the  eighty-five  thousand  white  adults  in 
Virginia  who  cannot  read  or  write,  and  the  even  more 
fearful  proportions  of  ignorance  in  more  Southern 
States ;  from  the  young  men  trained  to  licentious 
ness  and  idleness,  whose  remnant  of  strength  is  to-day 
given  to  the  monster  which  has  ruined  them  ;  from 
the  tearful,  anxious  eyes  of  mothers,  wives,  sisters, 


TO   THE   PRESIDENT   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES.         101 

whose  souls  know  the  agony  of  seeing-,  tl^son,  brpther, 
and  husband  the  easy  prey  of  .the  teniptations  -,tliat 
cannot  be  escaped,  —  0,  from  all  these,  Sir,  Voufd 
come  a  response  to  your  decree  for  Liberty :  "  Merci 
ful,  most  merciful  !  " 

There  is  a  weak  love  that  yields  and  indulges  ;  there 
is  a  great  and  divine  love  that  spares  not  to  smite  when 
to  smite  is  best,  —  ever  giving  what  is  wanted  more 
than  what  is  wished.  An  old  legend  relates  that  in  the 
court  of  King  Arthur  was  a  poor  dwarf  named  Carl. 
He  was  much  pitied  by  the  king  and  his  court,  and 
there  were  stern  orders  that  none  should  harm  the  poor 
dwarf.  It  was  also  supposed  that  Carl's  mind  was  de 
fective,  for  he  every  day  went  about  the  court  with  a 
sword,  beseeching  each  knight  to  cut  off  his  head  with 
it.  The  knights  of  course  would  refuse  to  slay  the 
dwarf,  who,  they  supposed,  wished  thus  to  be  relieved 
of  life.  At  length,  on  a  day,  the  dwarf  stood  before 
Sir  Gawain,  and,  with  a  voice  full  of  earnest  appeal, 
and  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  said,  "  Gawain,  canst  thou 
not  love  me  enough  to  smite  off  my  head  with  this 
sword  ? "  Sir  Gawain  was  so  moved  by  this,  that,  in 
an  instant,  he  seized  the  sword  and  cut  off  the  poor 
dwarf's  head ! 

Poor  dwarf  no  longer  !  The  evil  spell  which  had 
bound  him  in  his  misshapen  form,  until  one  of  Arthur's 
knights  should  cut  off  his  head,  was  now  broken,  and 
in  noble  and  knightly  form  and  guise  Sir  Carleton  stood 
where  poor  Carl  was  before. 
9 


102  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

\\h,  't  is  ../V':g?c^>  a  godlike  mercy  which  can  smite 
i£$  object  1  .  , 

And  there  are  -dwarfs  upon  earth,  from  age  to  age, 
that  only  thus  can  have  the  evil  spell  broken,  and  rise 
to  their  full  stature.  Sometimes  these  dwarfs  are 
States. 

4.  There  is  no  real  obstacle  or  danger  in  the  way  of 
it.  I  know  there  are  seeming  lions  in  the  path  ;  but 
several  pilgrim  nations  have  gone  that  way,  and  found 
the  lions  chained  each  side,  and  impotent.  We  have 
been  told  that  dreadful  scenes  and  vindictive  actions 
follow  emancipation  ;  that  the  Negroes  will  not  labor 
but  as  slaves,  and  thus  become  idlers  on  a  nation's 
hands.  The  facts  bear  otherwise. 

There  is  yet  to  be  shown  the  State  that  emancipated 
its  slaves,  which  did  not  at  once  rise  above  the  stature 
into  which  it  was  before  dwarfed. 

It  has  yet  to  be  shown  that  Right  has  ever  wronged 
any. 

If,  under  the  formidable  circumstances  which  now 
surround  our  nation,  we  should  fear  the  expenses  or  the 
labors  attending  such  a  step,  mark  how  Haiti  stands 
ready  to  bear  a  hand  to  the  holy  work.  The  Queen  of 
the  Antilles  sits  there  with  her  ungathered  wealth  about 
her,  her  spices  and  fruits  gilding  every  wave  around 
her  shores,  awaiting  the  ten  millions  of  gatherers  to 
whom  she  can  yet  give  a  hospitable  home.  One  word 
from  you,  Sir,  and  she  is  a  recognized  sister  Republic. 
Another  word,  and  whilst  African  troops  march  on  to 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.    103 

see  that  your  decree  is  executed,  the  aged,  the  women 
and  children,  which  we  can  scarcely  sustain,  are  borne 
away  to  the  happy  clime  where  no  fevers  nor  lashes 
await  them. 

5.  It  is  the  only  path  to  a  real  success.  We  justly 
count  as  a  great  natural  fortress  against  secession  that 
mountain  range  stretching  from  Pennsylvania  almost 
to  the  Gulf,  —  whose  brave  and  hardy  inhabitants  have 
justified  Milton's  designation  of  freedom  as  u  a  moun 
tain  nymph";  —  why  should  we  overlook  the  millions 
of  the  oppressed  stretching  into  every  branch  and  twig 
of  Southern  society,  who,  by  the  laws  of  God,  are  our 
natural  allies,  unless,  by  our  inhumanity,  we  drive  them 
to  the  side  of  the  enemy  ?  Is  it  best  to  have  700,000 
fighting  men  of  the  South  our  enemies,  when  we  can 
make  them  our  friends  ?  We  have  certain  knowledge 
that  we  have  been  represented  to  that  class  as  their 
bitterest  foes ;  they  have  been  told  that  our  plan  was 
to  slay  a  proportion  of  them  and  banish  the  rest.  This 
falsehood  has  been  systematically  and  carefully  circu 
lated  throughout  the  cabins  and  plantations,  and  justi 
fied  by  the  most  religious  Southerners  as  a  necessity 
of  defence.  We  have  done  nothing  to  disabuse  the 
slave's  mind  in  this  particular.  Consequently,  although 
here  and  there  a  knowing  Negro  has  been  able  to  do 
this  for  us,  the  mass  has  been  deceived,  and  is  working 
most  devotedly  against  us. 

At  this  rate,  we  shall  be  defeated,  and,  as  I  think, 
deservedly. 


104  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

But  this  war  must,  as  now  conducted,  prove  more 
and  more  a  disheartening  one  to  our  people  and  our 
soldiers. 

As  at  Manasses  our  men  conquered  one  battery  only 
to  find  two  more  opening  upon  that,  we  all  have  a  mis 
giving  that  a  victory  over  the  South  would  lead  to  the 
most  painful  complications.  We  must  hold  on  to  our 
victory  after  we  have  got  it,  for  it  will  have  a  perpetual 
tendency  to  elude  us.  It  was,  you  remember,  a  difficult 
problem  to  decide  whether  the  wolf,  or  the  man  who, 
having  caught  him,  had  to  hold  him  fast,  was  made 
captive  by  the  exploit.  If  the  cause  of  the  hatred  of 
the  South  to  the  North  and  the  Nation  and  to  free 
government  were  removed,  their  rage  against  these 
would  still  remain  in  the  breast  of  the  present  Southern 
generation ;  but  for  a  generation  we  could  hold  them 
quiet.  The  hatred  might  even  be  transmitted  to  the 
next  generation:  that  too  might  be  held.  But  in  this 
age,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  France  and  England,  feuds 
must  gradually  be  worn  away  before  advancing  com 
mercial  and  other  interests ;  and,  with  the  root  of  Dis 
union  plucked  up,  the  third  generation  at  the  South, 
and  perhaps  the  next,  would  thank  us  for  the  painful 
surgery  with  which  we  saved  them,  and  we  should  be 
bound  together  by  all  natural  ties,  —  ties  which  Slavery 
alone  holds  in  abeyance  now.  If  this  fair  prospect 
were  ahead,  our  people  would  forget  in  its  glory  the 
pains  and  deprivations  of  the  present,  and  go  forward 
animated  by  that  faith  which  is  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for. 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.    105 

Moreover,  the  many  disheartening  circumstances  that 
press  upon  us  now  would  be  removed.  To  the  soldier 
applause  is  sweet.  But  we  have  heard  no  plaudits 
from  the  world  looking  on,  —  none  from  England,  or 
France,  or  Germany,  or  Italy.  They  cried  Brava  !  to 
America  when  our  ballots  bore  you,  Sir,  to  the  Capitol ; 
they  are  silent  now  that  our  bayonets  would  defend 
your  right  there.  We  hear  from  over  the  seas  only 
cold  calculations  of  the  probable  issue.  The  civilized 
world  stands  ready  with  an  equal  welcome  to  either 
party  that  succeeds.  These  cold  buckets  which  are 
cast  upon  a  conflict  so  sacred  to  us,  we  have  invited, 
by  placing  the  issue  on  the  lowest  plane  of  which  it 
was  susceptible.  Your  own  last  Message  did  not  even 
suggest  the  word  Slavery. 

But  this  could  not  be,  if,  in  the  face  of  the  world, 
we  rose  to  the  standard  of  right  and  civilization  which 
those  very  nations  have  uplifted,  and  up  to  which  even 
Russia  has  come  before  us.  We  ourselves  have  from 
the  first  held  —  hold  now  —  the  power  to  decide  the 
posture  of  every  foreign  nation  toward  this  rebellion. 
Apart  from  Slavery,  England  can  only  see  in  the  South 
ern  movement  the  presentation  to  our  own  lips  of  the 
chalice  we  once  offered  hers.  In  this  she  is  right.  We 
are  wrong  and  presumptuous  in  any  complaint.  But 
the  civilized  world  is  anti-slavery ;  and  if  in  this  war 
we  did  but  touch  the  hem  of  Liberty's  vesture,  we 
should  be  thrilled  with  an  inspiration  and  sympathy 
which  would  soon  make  us  every  whit  whole.  We 

9* 


106  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

should  come  in  contact  with  that  electric  belt  which 
binds  the  hearts  of  freemen  round  the  world,  and  up 
from  every  nation  and  clime  would  swell  the  vivas 
and  bravas  and  hurrahs  which  would  make  our  every 
soldier  thrice  a  soldier,  and  cheer  us  on  to  a  victory 
which  every  eye  would  see  already  written  in  the  book 
of  Fate. 

6.  It  is  thus  alone  that  your  Excellency  can  be  faith 
ful  to  your  parole  of  honor  to  the  United  States.  You 
have  nobly  discerned  that  your  oath  of  office  required 
you  to  preserve  the  Union  and  the  Constitution  at  any 
cost.  You  can  hardly  fail  to  remember  that  the  Ameri 
can  people,  in  electing  you  over  candidates  representing 
all  varieties  of  opinion,  declared  that  certain  principles 
should  prevail  in  the  government  of  this  country,  — 
principles  to  which  you  had  pledged  your  allegiance. 
When  afterward  the  alternatives  of  this  painful  conflict 
or  the  abandonment  of  the  principles  on  which  you 
were  elected  were  again  and  again  presented  to  the 
American  people,  they  again  and  again  refused  any  and 
every  compromise  of  those  principles,  whatever  the  re 
sult  might  be.  You  cannot  be  true  to  them  if  you 
compromise  them,  or  fail  to  defend  them.  Slavery 
would  noiv  wrest  more  than  half  of  this  country  from 
its  allegiance  to  those  principles.  Either  the  Principle 
which  placed  you  in  office,  or  the  Institution  which  is 
in  deadly  grip  with  it,  must  fall  to  the  ground. 

Remember,  Sir,  that  the  people  did  not  place  you 
in  office  to  preserve  the  Union  merely ;  that  they  had 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.    107 

under  Fillmore  and  Buchanan  and  Pierce,  and  they 
might  have  retained  it  by  electing  Breckinridge  instead 
of  yourself.  But  not  doing  so,  they  declared  that  the 
Union  should  be  administered  in  the  interest  of  Free 
dom,  even  more  than  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  con 
ciliation.  To  that  end  your  honor  stands  plighted. 
If  any  peace  shall  come  in  which  that  end  is  lost,  the 
country  is  defeated,  whatever  victory  its  military  arm 
may  have  achieved. 

Can  you,  Sir,  preserve  the  United  States  with  Slavery' 
therein  ?  Will  Slavery  ever  be  united  with  the  prin 
ciples  you  represent?  Is  not  the  effort  to  make  it  so 
akin  to  the  effort  at  any  chemic  impossibility,  as  the 
union  exclusives  of  fire  and  water,  of  oil  and  alcohol  ? 

It  is  not  by  presenting  to  the  country  its  old  hulls 
riveted  with  steel  or  welded  with  fire  together  that 
you  can  fulfil  your  trust.  It  is  not  by  returning  us 
a  Union  in  which  it  will  be  virtually  impossible  ever 
to  elect  another  Republican  President,  for  fear  of  an 
other  insurrection.  That  would  be  to  restore  us  a 
country  bound  hand  and  foot.  If  Freedom  can  alone 
be  free  by  the  destruction  of  Slavery,  you  cannot  in 
honor  flinch  from  signing  the  death-warrant  of  that 
system. 

In  the  ancient  Promethean  games,  each  racer  bore 
in  his  hand  a  lighted  torch.  The  one  who  first 
reached  the  goal,  with  his  torch  still  lighted,  won  the 
prize.  If  he  came  in  foremost,  but  with  torch  ex 
tinguished,  the  later  comer  who  came  in  with  lighted 
torch  was  declared  victor. 


108  THE   REJECTED    STOXE. 

No  victory  in  this  war  can  be  a  victory  to  America, 
which  does  not  bring  in,  bright  and  burning,  the 
torch  of  Liberty,  —  ay,  of  African  Liberty  as  far  as 
the  people  by  their  last  election  declared  that  they 
could  and  would  control  and  limit  it,  —  which  the 
nation  gave  you  lighted  to  bear  in  their  van.  And  if 
Slavery  has  resolved  to  stake  its  life  on  the  wresting 
of  rights  which  the  people  have  irrevocably  denied  it, 
either  that  life  or  the  verdict  of  the  nation  must  be 
sacrificed.  Which  shall  it  be?  The  people  decided 
the  question  when  they  accepted  a  war  with  the 
South  rather  than  a  denial  of  their  principles,  and  to 
it,  unless  their  rulers  debauch  them,  they  will  stand. 
We  claim  of  you  that  you  shall  fulfil  Frederick  the 
Great's  definition  of  a  prince  as  "  the  first  of  sub 
jects,"  and  prove  it  by  being  the  last  to  yield  the 
standard  which  they  have  lifted,  and  of  which  you  are 
the  symbol. 

By  proclaiming  Freedom  to  all,  white  or  black,  who 
will  rally  to  the  defence  of  our  imperilled  banner,  you 
are  told  that  you  will  make  enemies  to  yourself  and 
the  cause  of  the  nation.  You  may,  Sir,  make  of  se 
cret  enemies  open  ones ;  the  serpent  that  now  creeps 
in  the  grass  may  think  it  safe  to  come  into  the  path  ; 
but  that  will  be  a  benefit.  It  would  be  not  the  least 
good  of  recognizing  a  direct  issue  with  Slavery,  that 
it  would  be  a  better  detective  than  Vidocq  of  the  se 
cret  traitors,  —  who,  whilst  sentimentalizing  about  the 
Union,  really  hold  it  as  secondary  and  subservient  to 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.    109 

Slavery,  and  only  refrain  from  mutiny  on  the  Ship  of 
State  because  they  hope  to  make  it  a  slaver  before  the 
voyage  is  over. 

But,  Sir,  when  the  half-hearted  go,  the  whole-hearted 
arrive.  The  Albany  and  Columbus  cliques  are  a 
cheap  price  to  pay  for  the  Garibaldis  with  their  twenty 
thousands. 

There  is,  honored  Sir,  a  class  of  men  in  this  country 
but  little  known,  —  men  who  have  been  kept  out  of 
the  politics  and  parties  by  which  the  forces  of  a  country 
are  usually  gauged,  because  of  an  enthusiasm  for  Lib 
erty  and  a  hatred  of  Slavery,  as  intense  and  devoted 
as  the  enthusiasm  for  Slavery  and  hatred  of  Freedom 
which  the  South  is  showing.  They  are  men  who  have 
sacrificed  the  faifi  prospects  of  life,  the  wealth  and 
power  which  usually  absorb  men,  for  a  truer  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  the  weak  and  degraded,  even  against 
the  nation  when  it  was  wrong.  They  are  men  who 
hold  their  lives  at  the  beck  and  call  of  Justice.  They 
stand  to-day  hand  on  hilt,  and  await  the  one  word  at 
which  their  swords  flash  out. 

That  word  is  EMANCIPATION. 

These  are  not  men  that  require  to  be  waked  up,  nor 
do  they  need  a  long  drill ;  they  have  long  been  wide 
awake,  and  they  were  born  drilled.  Only  let  that 
countersign  which  Nature  wrote  on  their  hearts  when 
they  came  into  the  world  be  uttered,  and  you  shall 
see  again  the  Scourges  of  God,  the  Avengers,  the 
Men  of  Destiny,  —  men  born  to  conquer  Slavery,  as 


110  THE   REJECTED   STOXE. 

is  the  eagle  to  destroy  the  serpent  that  coils  about  its 
nest,  —  sweeping  downward  from  every  plain  and  hill, 
riding  on  every  wind,  until  Humanity  is  avenged,  the 
Tyrant  and  his  host  overthrown,  and  Peace  bends 
once  more  her  blue  vault  over  a  happy  land,  unflecked 
by  a  cloud  of  wrong,  glorious  with  the  sun-burst  of 
impartial  Freedom. 

But,  Sir,  besides  this  resource,  upon  which  you  have 
not  drawn  even  if  you  know  of  its  existence,  —  a 
resource  upon  which  only  the  Liberty  which  includes 
the  slave  can  draw,  —  I  believe  you  would  find  that 
the  people  are  generally  prepared  for  this  measure. 

The  very  appearances  of  division  and  disloyalty  in 
the  North,  which  may  intimidate  our  leaders,  may 
well  be  considered  indications  of  a  growing  and  bolder 
feeling  among  the  masses.  The  appearance  of  activity 
amongst  the  compromisers  is  an  indication  of  an  in 
creasing  exasperation  amongst,  the  people  against  this 
rebellion,  and  a  deepening  conviction  that  a  blow  at 
the  cause  of  it  is  necessary.  The  uprising  of  one 
sentiment  is  always  attended  by  the  excitation  of  its 
antagonist. 

War  is  a  swift  and  infallible  educator.  The  old 
mansion  yet  stands  at  Perth  Amboy  where,  in  the 
midst  of  the  American  Revolution,  the  British  Howe, 
having  called  for  a  conference  with  the  Americans, 
met  John  Adams,  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  Thomas 
Rutlcdgc,  and  proposed  to  them  a  grant  from  England 
of  relief  from  the  taxes  under  which  they  had  groaned, 


TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.    Ill 

and  a  full  amnesty,  if  they  would  lay  down  their  arms. 
How  they  would  have  leapt  at  the  offer  a  little  before  ! 
At  Concord,  at  Lexington,  every  American  musket 
would  have  fallen  to  the  ground  before  such  a  prop 
osition. 

Bunker  Hill  came:  we  were  defeated  there. 

But  there  stands  the  monument  of  which  every  Amer 
ican  is  justly  most  proud,  though  it  stands  on  the  field 
where  we  were  defeated,  — for  there  the  gate  of  com 
promise  with  the  oppressor  closed  forever. 

When  our  fathers  began  their  revolution,  it  was  against 
an  unjust  tax ;  its  removal  would  have  closed  the  mat 
ter  at  once.  After  a  few  months  of  war,  its  removal 
and  many  other  privileges  are  offered  ;  but  the  war 
has  unsealed  a  higher  aim.  Our  fathers  replied  to 
the  compromise  proposition :  No,  THIS  WAR  ENDS  ONLY 

WITH   THE   ENTIRE   INDEPENDENCE   OF   AMERICA. 

I  think,  Sir,  that,  even  at  this  stage  of  our  second 
revolution  against  an  internal  tyrant,  the  concession 
of  an  amnesty  to  Slavery  on  condition  of  its  grounding 
arms  would  be  with  difficulty  obtained  from  the  people, 
and  that  the  indignation  which  a  few  weeks  ago  would 
have  been  allayed  by  the  return  of  forts  and  call  for 
a  convention  on  the  part  of  the  South,  rises  each  day, 
and  cannot  now  be  restrained  from  the  natural  climax 
that  will  sweep  the  source  of  all  our  evils  and  discords 
out  of  our  land  forever. 

Thus,  and  thus  alone,  can  we  have  an  enduring 
peace  ;  short  of  this,  it  is  difficult  to  see  even  in  a 


112  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

victory  anything  but  an  armistice  which  shall  be  the 
armistice  of  a  generation  of  cowards,  evading  a  task 
because  it  is  hard  by  adjourning  one  thrice  as  hard 
to  their  children. 

Sir,  't  is  not  often  in  this  world  that  to  one  man  is 
given  the  magnificent  opportunity  which  the  madness 
of  a  great  wrong  has  placed  within  your  reach. 

For  the  first  time  there  stands  a  man  in  the  Earth 
empowered  to  break  four  millions  of  fetters  from  the 
hands,  minds,  and  hearts  of  immortal  beings. 

What  prophetic  tongue  can  tell  the  plaudits  that 
reach  far  into  the  procession  of  the  ages,  or  of  the 
free  glad  voices  which  shall  deliver  from  generation 
to  generation  the  name  and  the  story  of  the  lowly 
youth,  —  the  honest  laborer,  —  the  President  who  up 
lifted  a  race  from  the  dungeon  of  Slavery,  and  cleared 
a  nation's  path  straight  to  its  sublime  destiny  ! 

But  ah  !  see  what  a  precipice  stretches  downward 
from  this  sunlit  summit !  Far  happier  the  rude  boy 
with  his  axe,  unnamed,  than  one  on  whom  Earth's 
millions  of  eyes  shall  turn  only  to  remember  that  he 
could  have  saved  mankind,  but  faltered  and  failed. 

Woe  to  him  to  whom  four  millions  of  slaves  shall 
point  their  shackled  hands  and  say,  "  There  is  just 
the  one  man  whom,  out  of  Earth's  millions,  God  elected 
as  he  who  should  have  power  to  remove  our  yokes,  to 
raise  us  from  beasts  of  burden  to  men,  unsealing  for 
us  the  fountains  of  affection,  hope,  aspiration,  which 
the  Father  has  provided  as  living  water  for  his  weary 
children.  He  swooned  on  the  great  moment. 


TO   THE   AMERICAN  PEOPLE.  113 

Blot  out  his  name,  then,  —  record  one  lost  soul  more, 
One  task  more  declined,  one  more  footpath  untrod, 
One  more  triumph  for  devils,  and  sorrow  for  angels, 
One  wrong  more  to  man,  one  more  insult  to  God." 

Woe  to  him  whom  Posterity,  reaping  its  bitter  har 
vest  of  agitation  and  affliction  from  the  dire  root  of 
all  our  evils,  shall  remember  only  to  curse  as  the  one 
who,  alone  of  all  men  in  the  history  of  this  nation, 
stood  on  the  moment  and  the  spot  where  it  was  legal 
and  practicable  to  pluck  up  the  roots  of  the  infernal 
tree,  but  who  failed  to  put  forth  his  hand. 

Mr.  President !  History  stands  with  the  blank  scroll 
before  her,  her  pen  she  holds  ready,  the  next  word  you 
must  dictate.  Shall  it  be  Slavery  or  Freedom  ? 


XVIII. 

TO    THE    AMERICAN    PEOPLE. 

OLD  legends  state  that  once,  in  the  midst  of  the  city 
of  Rome,  a  vast  and  fearful  chasm  opened.  The  peo 
ple  fled  in  terror  to  their  Oracles,  which  said,  "  When 
that  which  is  in  Rome  is  most  precious  shall  be  cast 
therein,  the  chasm  will  be  closed." 

Then  did  each  Roman  —  old  and  young,  man  and 
•  maid  —  bring  of  their  treasures  the  richest,  and  cast 
10 


114  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

therein ;  but  yet  the  abyss  yawned  wider  and  wider 
in  the  city's  heart. 

At  length  a  young  man  rose  before  the  council,  and 
said,  "  Romans,  what  is  it  that  Rome  holds  most  pre 
cious  ?  Is  it  not  her  MANHOOD  ? "  Thus  saying,  he 
leaped  into  the  chasm,  and  it  closed  above  him  for 
ever. 

It  is  not  all  fable.  In  every  nation  the  abyss  has 
at  some  time  yawned,  and  closed  only  by  the  sacri 
fices  of  manhood. 

Under  the  heart  of  America  it  opens  to-day.  TTe 
began  by  casting  in  this  and  that  treasure.  One 
brought  his  compromise,  another  his  diplomacy,  an 
other  his  military  fame,  —  still  the  abyss  closed  not. 

Is  there  not,  then,  in  America  anything  precious 
enough  to  close  it  ?  My  brothers !  it  is  not  the  order 
of  this  universe  that  an  emergency  should  come  to 
brute  or  man  or  nation  for  which  —  if  to  pass  it  be 
lawful  —  the  strength  has  not  been  prepared.  When 
wings  are  formed  in  the  egg,  and  no  atmosphere  pro 
vided  to  sustain  them,  —  when  eyes  are  fashioned  in 
the  womb,  and  no  sun  rises  to  meet  them,  —  then  may 
you  believe  that  a  nation  worthy  to  survive  is  com 
mitted  to  an  ordeal  for  which  there  are  no  resources, 
or  insufficient  ones. 

Resources  there  are  in  this  land,  did  we  only  draw 
upon  them,  which  would  close  this  war  with  the 
closing  of  this  year. 

INTO  THIS  CHASM  AMERICA'S  MANHOOD  MUST  LEAP. 


TO   THE   AMERICAN  PEOPLE.  115 

It  is  not  manhood  that  fights  for  its  own  freedom, 
holding  itself  ready  to  "  crush  with  an  iron  hand  " 
others  who  would  seek  their  freedom. 

It  is  not  manhood  that  raises  a  question  of  rule  over 
a  question  of  Humanity. 

It  is  not  manhood  that  apologizes  for  every  blow  it 
is  compelled  to  give  to  the  greatest  wrong  against  man. 

It  is  not  manhood  that  fears  or  distrusts  the  conse 
quences  of  doing  right. 

When  this  becomes  a  war  of  our  manhood,  i.  e.  a 
war  for  Humanity,  then  the  abyss  will  close  ;  not 
before.  Many  treasures  may  be  swallowed  up  ere 
that  Curtius  comes. 

Americans !  for  the  first  time  in  many  years  you  have 
an  administration  that  really  represents  you.  Your 
President  is  by  history  and  habit  and  sympathy  one  of 
the  people  ;  he  has  not  lived  long  enough  in  Washing 
ton  to  get  on  that  political  tripod  which  destroys  the 
current  of  connection  with  the  heart  of  the  masses. 
However  much  individuals  may  be  dissatisfied  with 
the  present  management  at  Washington,  there  are 
many  proofs  that  it  represents  the  average  status  of 
the  masses.  As  we,  then,  the  people,  grow,  it  will 
grow  ;  as  our  energy  ripens,  the  government  will 
ripen.  When  Yallandigham  is  not  sent  from  Ohio, 
his  treason  will  not  be  tolerated  at  Washington.  Be 
sure  that  the  President  will  mirror  your  manhood 
when  it  arrives. 

Bring  forward  the  strength  of  your  manhood,  my 


116  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

countrymen,  to  whatever  post  of  labor  you  are  ap 
pointed  !  We  need  Ellsworths  of  the  press,  Winthrops 
of  the  fireside,  Lyons  of  the  pulpit.  "We  need  not 
only  the  brave  men  who  shall  defend  the  standards 
when  they  are  lifted  up,  but  earnest  hearts  who  shall 
lift  them  up,  —  ay,  upon  the  very  towers  of  Human 
ity  and  Freedom.  We  need  a  banner  on  which  every 
eye  of  the  earth  looking  shall  see  written  its  freedom 
and  joy.  We  need  a  school  of  seers,  of  prophets, 
who,  as  of  old,  shall  cry  aloud-  and  spare  not,  showing 
the  evils,  the  inhumanities,  which  must  be  conquered 
in  ourselves,  before  we  are  worthy  to  fight  for,  and 
win  the  victories  of,  Right  over  Wrong,  of  Freedom 
over  Slavery.  Liberty's  arm  is  not  shortened  that  it 
cannot  save,  but  our  iniquities  have  separated  between 
us  and  that  arm.  Let  every  tongue  that  can  speak 
be  touched  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar  of  God ; 
let  every  pen  that  can  write  be  dipped  in  the  truest 
blood  of  an  earnest  heart ;  let  every  arm  that  can 
strike  nerve  itself  to  smite  or  be  smitten  for  universal 
Freedom  !  Let  none  stand  back,  and  say,  "  I  will 
wait  until  this  is  a  noble  war,  a  war  for  Humanity  "  ; 
let  all  enter,  and  make  it  a  noble  war,  make  it  the 
struggle  of  Humanity.  Our  President  is  a  Resolution 
which  the  people  have  passed.  When  a  fresh  and 
higher  clause  has  been  added  by  them,  it  will  be 
repeated  by  every  sword  and  cannon  that  goes  south 
ward  from  Washington.  Whilst  the  water  rises  to 
but  twenty  feet  with  the  people,  let  them  not  expect 


THE  GEE  AT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         117 

it  to  be  thirty  with  their  representatives.  As  we  hold 
up  their  hands,  or  fail  to  hold  them  up,  the  day  will 
be  won  or  lost. 

Forward,  then,  to  the  breach  !  No  war  of  Manhood 
was  ever  yet  lost. 

The  Rejected  Stone,  whose  name  is  JUSTICE  TO  MAN, 
is,  in  the  order  of  God,  once  more  offered  America. 
It  is  for  the  people  to  give  it  the  master-builder,  to 
be  laid  as  the  Head  of  the  Corner  in  the  future  fabric, 
the  Republic  of  Man. 

That  day,  and  that  alone,  which  sees  the  Nation 
"  broken  "  to  the  measure  of  this  stone  upon  which 
it  has  now  fallen,  shall  see  its  ONE  FOE,  upon  which 
that  stone  shall  then  fall,  GROUND  TO  POWDER. 


XIX. 

THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE. 

IT  were  a  sad  thing  if  we  should  suffer  the  clangor 
of  arms  to  drown  that  angel  choir  that  ever  singeth  of 
"  Peace  on  earth  and  good- will  to  men,"  We  should 
indeed  meet  with  utter  indignation  and  execration  that 
Devil's-peace,  whose  white  flag  now  seeks  to  disguise 
the  black  one  of  the  pirate  and  slaver,  and  to  divide 
the  forces  that  rally  under  that  which  alone  now  floats 
10* 


118  THE  REJECTED   STOXE. 

for  Liberty  and  Justice.  No  war,  however  bloody  or 
interminable,  can  be  so  horrible  as  that  peace  offered 
us  by  traitors  in  our  midst,  —  a  peace  whose  quiet 
would  be  that  of  a  nation's  grave,  whose  outside  repose 
would  be  but  the  cover  of  corruption  and  loathsome 
vermin.  Against  such  a  peace  God  has  forever  set  his 
angel  with  the  sword  of  flame.  Between  him  and  all 
wrong  there  can  be  no  peace :  the  white  flag  of  peace  is 
only  a  flag  of  truce.  The  truce  may  last  a  month,  a 
year,  ten  years  ;  but  between  Justice  and  Injustice, 
Right  and  Wrong,  Liberty  and  Slavery,  there  can  only 
be  a  truce,  never  a  peace.  The  very  field  of  concilia 
tion  invariably  turns  out  the  field  of  battle  :  for  before 
the  song  of  "  Peace  on  earth  !  "  comes  that  of  "  Glory 
to  God  in  the  highest!" 

But,  my  friends,  though  not  a  thousandth  part  so 
bad  as  a  false  peace,  war  is  always  wrong.  It  is  some 
times,  as  now,  necessary ;  but  not  absolutely,  only  rela 
tively  necessary,  —  necessary,  that  is,  only  because  we 
know  not  the  things  that  make  for  our  peace.  There 
might  be  a  peace  at  once,  a  peace  consistent  with  our 
national  honor  and  unity.  But  the  means  of  it  are  hid 
from  our  nation's  eyes.  Every  rebel  might  be  disarmed 
to-morrow.  But  the  victories  of  Peace  require  so  much 
more  courage  than  those  of  war,  that  they  are  rarely 
won.  When  we  do  conquer  a  peace,  however,  it  will 
assuredly  be  by  the  use  of  a  certain  sword,  which,  if 
drawn  to-day,  would  win  us  a  peace  to-day, —  a  sword, 
too,  which  does  not  destroy,  but  makes  alive. 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         119 

Gregory  of  Tours  walked  near  the  palace  of  Soissons 
with  Sylvius,  the  Bishop  of  Albi.  "  Do  you  see  any 
thing  on  that  roof?"  said  Sylvius.  "I  see  the  stand 
ard  which  Hilperic  the  king  has  set  up,"  replied  the 
monk.  "  And  you  see  nothing  else  ? "  inquired  the 
Bishop.  "  No  :  do  you  see  anything  ?  "  "I  see  the 
sword  of  Divine  vengeance  hung  over  that  wicked 
house." 

So  it  proved  ;  so  it  ever  will  prove.  When  human 
endurance  is  at  an  end,  the  sentence  of  Heaven  is  close 
at  hand.  Such  sentence  is  indeed  pronounced  through 
human  lips,  and  executed  by  human  hands  ;  but  when 
in  an  extremity,  or  by  the  necessity  that  knows  no  law, 
or  rather  obeys  the  highest  of  laws,  a  people  is  driven 
to  enact  some  mighty  change  in  society,  tkey  consum 
mate  the  decree  of  the  Universe.  By  such  revolution 
God  fulfils  the  oath  he  has  sworn,  that  every  wrong 
shall  be  overthrown,  and  the  kingdoms  of  this  world 
become  the  kingdom  of  his  Christ  forever. 

It  does  not  require  eyes  so  keen  as  those  of  the  old 
French  bishop  to  see  the  hair-strung  sword  of  retribu 
tion  hung  over  the  palace  of  King  Secession.  While 
the  North  is  now  sending  its  young  men  to  die  on 
the  battle-field,  the  sword  yet  sleeps  in  the  scabbard  by 
our  side  at  sight  of  which  rebellion  would  ground  its 
arms.  That  sword  is  Emancipation.  Fear  or  hate 
will  inevitably  draw  it  in  the  end:  how  much  better 
that  Justice  and  Mercy  should  draw  it  now !  The 
common  sense  of  the  nation  has  already  rendered  the 


120  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

verdict  that  Slavery  is  the  cause  of  this  trouble,  yet 
we  have  forborne  to  touch  that  institution.  Not  only 
is  Slavery  the  historic  cause  of  the  rebellion,  but  it  is 
the  one  thing  that  alone  makes  it  practicable  at  the 
South.  Slavery  is  itself  essentially,  and  in  its  most 
quiet  condition,  a  rebellion.  It  is  a  rebellion  against 
the  laws  of  this  Universe,  —  a  guilty  defiance  of  God 
and  man.  So  it  stood  in  reason  before  it  bore  its  bit 
ter  fruits  in  practice.  Nettle-roots  sting  not,  but  'tis 
their  law  to  produce  the  nettles  that  do  sting.  Hence 
Slavery  has  not  departed  from  its  natural  law  in  now 
seeking  to  lift  its  "  bars  "  against  "  our  banner  in  the 
sky."  Its  whole  spirit  and  tendency  is  to  engender 
that  arrogance  and  self-aggrandizement  which  have  cul 
minated  in  this  rebellion.  To  enslave  four  millions  is 
a  suitable  training  for  the  enslavement  of  thirty.  But, 
as  we  have  said,  it  is  not  only  the  ultimate  cause  of 
Secession  ;  Slavery  alone  renders  the  present  attitude 
of  the  South  possible.  It  is  only  because  a  slave  can 
be  left  at  home  to  till  the  soil,  that  the  white  man  is 
able  to  bear  arms  in  the  army.  Should  it  be  once 
announced  that  every  slave  was,  in  the  eye  of  the  coun 
try,  a  free  man,  each  Southerner  would  have  to  hurry 
home  to  be  his  own  home-guard  and  his  own  home- 
provisioner.  Such  a  measure  would  disband  the  South 
ern  forces,  and  pin  every  rebel  to  his  home.  Their 
armies  would  soon  "  fold  their  tents,  like  the  Arabs, 
and  silently  steal  away."  Every  slave  in  the  South, 
whether  building  breastworks  or  not,  whether  belong- 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         121 

ing  to  a  loyalist  or  not,  is,  by  the  wealth  and  strength 
he  produces  in  that  section,  really  arrayed  against  the 
North.  Some  of  us  are  hoping  for  an  insurrection 
down  there  to  demoralize  their  army.  It  will  never 
come.  Three  fully  armed  watchmen  can  secure  a  hun 
dred  slaves  from  consultation  or  rising.  Hercules  will 
not  come  and  take  the  wheel  out  of  the  rut  for  us. 
Nay,  more,  as  long  as  we  fail  to  use  that  weapon,  it  is 
one  whose  hilt  may  at  any  critical  moment  be  grasped 
by  the  South  and  wielded  with  terrible  effect.  The 
Republic  of  Colombia  placed  a  sword  in  every  slave's 
hand,  and  proclaimed  freedom  to  each  and  all  who 
should  rally  to  its  defence.  The  South  may  follow 
their  example,  and  thus,  by  proving  itself  more  the 
Negro's  friend  than  the  North,  may  turn  our  natural 
allies  in  their  midst  to  our  active  and  bitter  foes. 
Dear  as  Slavery  is  to  the  South,  the  hope  of  conquer 
ing  the  "  Yankees "  is  dearer.  Should  they  adopt 
this  measure,  we  should  be  inevitably  defeated  in  this 
war. 

I  feel  profoundly  impressed  that  the  country  should 
at  once  and  most  seriously  look  this  matter  in  the  face. 
In  the  rapid  march  of  events,  how  soon  may  this  sure 
weapon  be  carried  beyond  our  reach  !  I  therefore 
propose  to  look  below  the  surface  of  this  matter,  and 
examine  some  of  those  popular  errors  concerning  the 
policy  of  emancipation  which  have  been  industriously 
circulated  and  fostered  by  the  defenders  of  Slavery, 
and  which  may  yet  paralyze  our  arm  in  the  great 


122  THE  REJECTED   STOXE. 

moment  of  its  opportunity.  These  errors  pass  daily 
from  tongue  to  tongue  on  our  streets,  in  such  phrases 
as,  "  the  horrors  of  insurrection,"  "  the  scenes  of  St. 
Domingo";  and  we  are  constantly  asked,  "  What  could 
we  do  with  the  Negroes  ? " 

It  is  a  little  singular  that  Slavery  has  so  long  been 
able  to  keep  up  in  the  popular  mind  an  idea  that 
emancipation  would  bring  all  manner  of  evils  and 
complications  in  its  train,  when  the  facts  are  so  em 
phatically  otherwise.  The  dictum  is  complacently 
announced  in  our  midst,  whilst  nearly  every  civilized 
nation  is  at  this  moment  enjoying  the  beneficent  re 
sults  of  emancipation.  Let  us  see  :  — 

On  the  10th  day  of  October,  1811,  the  Congress 
of  Chili  decreed  that  every  child  born  of  slave  parents 
after  that  date  should  be  free. 

On  the  9th  of  April,  1812,  the  government  of 
Buenos  Ayres  declared  the  same  free  who  should  be 
born  after  the  1st  of  January,  1813. 

On  the  19th  of  July,  1821,  the  Congress  of  Colom 
bia  emancipated  all  the  slaves  who  had  borne  arms 
for  the  defence  of  the  Republic,  and  provided  for  the 
entire  emancipation  in  eighteen  years  of  all  its  slaves, 
—  280,000  in  number. 

On  the  loth  of  September,  1821,  Mexico  granted 
immediate  and  unconditional  emancipation  to  all  its 
slaves. 

On  the  4th  of  July,  1827,  the  State  of  New  York 
emancipated  at  once  its  10,000  slaves. 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         123 

On  the  1st  of  August,  1834,  Great  Britain  emanci 
pated,  at  a  cost  of  8100,000,000,  all  the  slaves  in  her 
West  Indian  possessions, —  800,000  in  number. 

Here,  now,  are  instances  of  every  variety  of  emanci 
pation, —  immediate,  gradual,  conditional,  uncondi 
tional.  And  it  has  not  only  yet  to  be  shown  where 
and  when  any  scene  of  violence  or  danger  followed 
these  decrees,  in  even  a  single  instance,  but  it  can  be 
shown  that  each  of  these  countries  rose  after  them  in 
the  national  scale  as  to  security  and  general  prosperity. 
This  has  been  particularly  the  case  in  the  "West  Indies, 
about  which  so  many  lies  have  been  so  industriously 
circulated.  There,  on  one  glorious  night,  800,000 
slaves  knelt  in  their  chapels,  watching  for  Liberty's 
midnight-morning  ;  and  when  the  midnight  hour  rang 
out,  they  arose  freemen.  The  morning's  dawn  found 
each  one  at  his  usual  post  of  labor,  and  ready  to 
continue  to  earn  the  legitimate  produce  of  the  island. 
There  were  scenes  of  joy  such  as  might  have  drawn 
the  gaze  of  hovering  angels,  there  were  such  touching 
scenes  as  must  attend  the  casting  aside  of  grave-clothes, 
the  emergence  from  the  sepulchre  of  a  people  who 
have  heard  a  Messiah  saying,  ."  Come  forth  !  Unbind 
him  hand  and  foot !  "  But  there  was  not  one  scene 
of  that  rebellion  and  retribution  which  had  been  antici 
pated,  perhaps  because  merited. 

But  we  hear  much  of  the  "  fearful  scenes  of  St. 
Domingo."  I  have  reserved  mention  of  this  island, 
because  it  contains  for  us  a  higher  lesson  than  the 


124  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

practicability  of  emancipation  (which  it  also  teaches), 
even  the  formidable  results  which  may  follow  an  at 
tempt  to  thwart  the  policy  of  emancipation  when  any 
exigency  commands  it.  There  is,  indeed,  a  possibility 
that  "  the  scenes  of  St.  Domingo "  may  be  repeated 
upon  this  continent ;  and  it  is  not  hard  to  foretell  on 
whom  the  responsibility  of  their  occurrence  shall  rest 
in  such  an  event. 

On  the  28th  of  March,  1790,  the  National  Assembly 
of  France  decreed  that  "  all  free  persons  "  of  St.  Do 
mingo  should  have  the  right  of  suffrage.  This  was 
passed  at  the  solicitation  of  the  free  colored  residents 
of  the  island,  and  was  meant  to  confer  the  privilege 
of  voting  upon  them.  The  planters  became  excessively 
indignant  at  this  grant  of  political  privileges  to  the 
free  Negroes,  and  denied  them  the  right  to  avail  them 
selves  of  it.  Oge*,  a  mulatto,  claimed  the  exercise  of 
the  right  at  the  head  of  an  army.  A  war-cry  was  the 
response.  At  length  the  planters,  after  the  death  of 
six  thousand  men,  acquiesced,  the  French  Assembly 
meanwhile  inserting  the  word  colored  in  their  decree 
of  suffrage,  so  as  to  make  its  grant  to  the  free  Negroes 
unmistakable.  Thus  far  there  was  no  attempt  by  any 
party  to  free  the  slaves ;  indeed,  the  free  Negroes  had 
helped  at  various  times  to  suppress  the  insurrection 
of  slaves  against  those  very  planters  with  whom  they 
were  themselves  contending.  In  September,  1791,  the 
French  government  revoked  the  decree  of  suffrage  to 
the  free  Negroes.  It  was  doubtless  as  an  expedient, 


THE  GEE  AT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         125 

for  on  the  4th  of  April  of  the  next  year  the  decree 
of  rights  was  again  issued,  and  three  Commissioners 
with  six  thousand  troops  sent  by  France  to  St.  Do 
mingo  to  enforce  it.  Thereupon  the  planters  inaugu 
rated  a  conspiracy  to  place  their  island  in  the  hands 
of  England.  The  French  Commissioners,  hearing  of 
the  approach  of  English  troops,  and  finding  that  they 
must  resist  an  assault  from  that  power  with  about 
21,000  troops,  on  three  fourths  of  which  (they  being 
the  militia  of  the  country)  they  could  not  rely,  at 
once  emancipated  the  slaves,  —  500,000  in  number, — 
a  measure  which  France  or  England  may  yet,  in  the 
same  way,  compel  the  United  States  to  adopt.  The 
British  evacuation  of  St.  Domingo  took  place  in  1798. 
Then  Toussaint  1'Ouverture,  the  black  Washington, 
arose,  and  on  the  1st  of  July,  1801,  the  independence 
of  St.  Domingo  was  declared. 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  up  to  this  time  there  were 
no  "  fearful  scenes  "  in  St.  Domingo,  except  such  as 
were  occasioned  by  a  mad  rebellion  of  the  white 
planters  against  the  just  decrees  of  their  government. 
And  each  fresh  horror  came  of  their  mad  conspiracy 
to  transfer  the  island  to  foreign  powers.  The  slaves, 
after  their  manumission  by  the  French  Commissioners, 
went  on  for  the  most  part  working  patiently,  as  before, 
seeking  no  political  privileges,  until  this  'quiet  was 
changed  by  the  conspiracies  of  the  planters  to  betray 
them,  now  to  this  nation,  now  to  that,  —  to  any  that 
would  re-enslave  them.  When  their  liberties  were 
11 


126  THE   REJECTED   STONE. 

assaulted,  eight  years  after  they  were  legally  gained, 
by  Napoleon,  these  men  showed  themselves  worthy  of 
those  liberties,  by  defending  them  as  brave  men  have 
done  in  every  age  and  land  ;  and  instead  of  such  de 
fence  being  attended  witli  barbarities  on  the  part  of 
the  Negroes,  the  whole  history  of  the  Haitian  Republic 
down  to  this  day  is  a  continuous  record  and  attestation 
of  French  and  English  and  Spanish  treacheries  and 
cruelties,  —  perfidies  and  cruelties  persistent  and  al 
most  incredible,  —  and  of  heroism,  patience,  and  only 
too  much  generosity,  on  the  part  of  the  Negroes. 

Indeed,  there  never  was  a  siege  or  campaign  of  one 
of  these  white  nations  which  was  not  followed  by  out 
rages  for  the  cruelty  of  which  the  records  of  insurrec 
tion  furnish  no  parallel.  In  even  the  insurrection  of 
Nat  Turner,  in  Virginia,  the  violation  of  woman 
formed  no  part.  In  the  plan  of  Denmark  Vescy,  in 
South  Carolina,  there  was  a  stern  prohibition  against 
any  wanton  outrage,  and  not  a  blow  was  aimed  but 
would  have  been  essential  to  liberation.  No  woman 
or  child  was  ever  slain,  except  it  was  certain  they 
would  be  able  to  alarm  neighborhoods,  and  defeat  the 
plan  of  insurrection  ;  and  the  blow,  wherever  it  fell, 
was  swift,  the  death  instant,  where  in  other  lands 
vindictive  tortures  have  been  resorted  to.  The  motto 
of  the  Negro,  in  the  few  instances  where  he  has  struck 
for  his  freedom,  has  always  been  Liberty,  never  Ven 
geance.  In  this  regard,  the  mildest  race  in  the  world 
has  been  most  infamously  slandered,  or  absurdly  mis 
understood. 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         127 

As  far  as  any  minds  are  haunted  by  the  question, 
"  What  shall  we  do  with  the  Negroes,  should  we  free 
them  ? "  we  have  to  say,  that  we  should  do  with  them 
just  what  was  done  in  the  seven  cases  of  modern  times 
already  named,  in  each  of  which  the  same  question, 
"  What  shall  we  do  with  them  ? "  cleared  away  like  a 
phantom  before  the  dawn  of  emancipation.  The  meas 
ure  was  followed  in  each  case  by  no  evil,  and  by  every 
happy  result.  With  the  South,  indeed,  as  with  others, 
the  palaces  of  the  few  might  shrink,  but  the  huts  of  the 
many  would  expand  to  homes  of  comfort.  Immense 
plantations  would  become  smaller,  but  the  little  patch 
of  ground  that  scarcely  sustains  the  poor  white  of  the 
South  would  be  enlarged.  And  with  this  whole  false 
state  of  society  would  pass  away  the  effeminacy,  the 
licentiousness,  the  arrogance,  and  general  barbarism 
which  are  the  legitimate  brood  of  Slavery,  and  which 
have  shown  their  power  to  make  the  fairest  and  broad 
est  country  of  the  earth  a  cage  of  unclean  birds. 

There  is  one  lesson  that  the  Negro  temperament 
easily  learns,  and  one  which  a  long  training  has  con 
firmed, —  that  is  obedience.  He  may  presently  be 
come  a  blind  insurrectionist,  and  his  wrath  sweep  like 
a  conflagration  through  the  land :  we  shall  then  see 
that  it  was  a  false  mercy  to  the  South,  and  a  great 
injustice  to  the  whole  country,  that  he  was  not  (as  he 
may  be  now)  transformed  into  a  controllable  power 
and  subject  of  the  nation. 

As  far  as  their  able-bodied  workmen  are  concerned, 
there  is  plenty  for  them  to  do.  Our  broad  lands  north 


128  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

and  south  need  their  labor  as  much  as  ever.  As  far 
as  the  many  aged  and  the  children  and  invalids  — 
who  at  present,  without  risk,  could  not  remain  in  the 
South  —  are  concerned,  we  should  be  more  fortunate 
than  any  emancipating  nation  ever  was  before.  Haiti 
sits  at  this  moment  waiting  to  help  this  great  work, 
willing  to  send  her  every  ship  to  our  shores  and  bear 
to  her  shores  every  Negro  who  will  go.  The  Queen 
of  the  Antilles  sits  on  her  throne  of  plenty,  —  her 
shores  gilded  with  richest  fruits,  calling  only  for  hands 
to  gather  and  turn  them  into  wealth,  —  offering  every 
colored  man  who  will  come  the  bounty  of  a  free  voy 
age  thither  and  a  land  grant  on  his  arrival.  With 
one  word  of  recognition,  this  government  can  secure  at 
once  the  peace  and  safety  of  both  Haiti  and  America.* 

Is  it  not  melancholy  that  nations  so  generally  wait 
to  be  driven  by  hard  physical  necessity  to  do  great 
and  just  deeds  ?  The  just  measure  which,  if  done 
from  a  high  motive  and  in  calmness,  produces  pure 
and  beneficent  results  to  all;  if  done  afterward,  under 
the  compulsion  of  fear  or  as  a  measure  of  vengeance, 

*  It  is  almost  unpardonable,  indeed,  that  our  government  has  not  already 
spoken  that  word,  and  the  failure  may  he  attributed  chiefly  to  the  fact  that 
we  have  nobody  whose  business  it  is  to  attend  to  such  matters.  It  may  be 
said,  just  here,  that  it  is  high  time  that  another  department  in  our  govern 
ment  should  be  recognized  and  formally  created,  one  whose  duty  shall  be 
a  suitable  attention  to  the  Slavery  question,  and  the  momentous  and  com 
plex  affairs  growing  out  of  it  day  by  day.  We  need  a  new  Cabinet  officer 
for  this.  It  is  of  infinitely  more  importance  than  the  Bureau  for  the  Indians. 
The  government  has  already  drifted  hopelessly,  and  without  any  certain 
policy,  amidst  the_fragments  and  snags  of  this  half-wrecked  institution,  one 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         129 

brings  those  results  fearfully  alloyed  with  difficulties 
and  dangers.  The  work  that  God  gives  us  to  do,  we 
do  a  great  deal  better  than  it  will  be  done  if  we  send 
it  back  for  him  to  do.  What  the  French  Assembly 
might  have  written  peacefully  on  parchment,  but  re 
fused,  God  soon  after  wrote  with  a  pen  of  iron,  and 
in  blood-red  ink,  on  every  street  in  Paris.  "When  we 
leave  it  to  Providence  to  do  our  work,  Providence 
always  brings  with  it  a  mixture  of  hell-fire,  to  teach 
the  foolish  world  how  much  better  it  is  to  do  its  own 
work.  The  abolition  of  Slavery,  which  is  almost  in 
evitable  during  this  war,  would,  if  accomplished  at  this 
moment,  unselfishly  and  grandly,  simply  because  the 
war  power  has  brought  the  nation  to  the  one  glorious 
moment  when  it  can  legally  abolish  it,  be  a  peace  meas 
ure  :  erelong  it  will  be  a  fierce  and  fearful  war  meas 
ure,  almost  as  painful  to  the  party  forced  to  use  it  as 
to  those  at  whom  it  will  be  aimed. 

Ah,  if  this  nation  but  knew,  in  this  its  day,  the  things 
that  belong  to  its  peace !  Now  they  are  hid  from  its 
eyes.  Hid,  —  but  not  because  they  are  not  just  before 
us,  not  because  it  is  too  late  to  avail  ourselves  of  them ; 

policy  in  Missouri,  another  in  Virginia.  Let  the  peril  be  provided  for  at 
once.  It  may  be,  before  long,  seen  that  the  issue  of  our  country's  life  or 
death  rests  with  the  Slavery  question;  already  it  is  generally  felt  that, 
whilst  there  is  the  utmost  need  that  we  should  have  a  policy  on  the  matter 
to  which  we  can  adhere,  there  is  a  painful  confusion  of  thought  among  the 
people,  and  action  among  their  rulers,  as  to  what  is,  or  should  be,  the  atti 
tude  of  the  government  toward  that  institution.  Let  our  government  re 
assure  the  public,  by  making  it  certain  that  we  shall  not  be  wrecked  on  this 
rock,  for  want  of  a  special  pilot  to  watch  and  warn. 


130  THE   REJECTED    STONE. 

they  are  hid  because  our  eyes  are  weak  and  averted, 
not  having  the  courage  to  look  squarely  before  us. 
Glorious  as  our  national  uprising  has  been,  it  has  not 
yet  reached  that  pure  and  peaceful  elevation  that,  with 
a  wave  of  the  divine  wand  of  rectitude,  could  sway 
without  a  blow  the  muttering  Caliban  of  Rebellion. 

An  old  man  lately  looked  upon  the  pale,  dead  face 
of  his  slain  son,  and  said,  "  Slavery,  then,  has  thus 
entered  my  own  door."  Into  how  many  doors  has  it 
come !  Already  within  six  months  some  ten  thousand 
young  men  of  America  have  been  sacrificed  on  the 
unholy  altar  of  human  bondage.  Already  stalwart 
arms  are  idle,  trade  languishes  at  her  marts,  and  the 
cry  of  the  poor  at  the  North  begins  to  answer  that  of 
the  oppressed  at  the  South  ;  together  their  voices  cry 
to  God  and  man,  asking :  Men  and  Brethren,  what 
great  good  has  this  institution  ever  done,  what  good 
is  it  now  doing  or  expected  to  do,  that  would  make 
it  desirable  to  sacrifice  one  single  human  life  to  it, 
much  less  thousands  of  lives  ?  What  is  there  in  Slav 
ery  that  would  make  it  well  to  sacrifice  to  it  the  bread 
of  one  weeping  child,  much  less  the  living  of  thousands? 
Why,  0  why  this  cruel  tenacity  to  an  unmitigated  evil, 
and  one  which  alone  makes  this  war  possible  ?  Does 
it  make  the  slaveholder  a  good  man,  or  a  wise  and 
peaceful  and  happy  man  ?  Does  it  make  freemen  no 
ble,  brave,  devoted  to  the  right  ?  Does  it  add  to  the 
nation's  wealth,  culture,  progress,  or  happiness  ?  Is 
it  not  an  unmitigated  and  blighting  curse,  now  heavy 
upon  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  this  land  ?  Look, 


THE  GREAT  METHOD  OF  PEACE.         131 

then,  America,  into  the  pallid  faces  of  thy  slain  young 
men ;  follow  from  home  to  home  where  the  destroying 
angel  has  passed ;  listen  to  the  growing  cry  for  work, 
already  changing  to  the  fiercer  cry  for  bread ;  see  par 
alyzed  trade  and  closed  schools  ;  and  tell  us  what  there 
is  in  human  oppression  so  sacred  that  its  blood-splashed 
chariot-wheels  must  not  be  stayed  ? 

We  all  see  plainly  that  our  government  is  led  by  the 
people,  and  that  the  people  must  first  pass  the  great 
acts  which  must  guide  their  rulers.  This  has  always 
been  the  case  where  any  great  and  solemn  crisis  has 
arrived  to  a  nation,  involving  high  moral  principles. 
Diplomatists  and  politicians  never  strike  a  great  blow 
for  the  right  except  from  the  constraining  force  of 
public  opinion  ;  the  wrong  they  do  is  spontaneous  ;  if 
they  must  do  right,  they  take  care  to  explain  that  it 
is  from  military  or  political  necessity ;  but  they  seem 
never  to  fear  that  a  measure  will  not  be  supported 
because  of  its  unrighteousness.  The  heart  of  England 
was  absolutely  all  aflame  and  seething  against  Slavery 
in  the  West  Indies,  whilst  the  government  was  cold 
and  impassive.  One  day  the  petitions  for  emancipation 
were  so  numerous  and  bulky,  that  it  took  six  men  to 
carry  them  into  Parliament.  Then  Parliament  stirred 
a  little.  One  day  afterward,  it  was  reported  that 
800,000  women  of  England  —  one  for  every  slave  in 
the  Indies  —  were  knocking  at  the  door  of  Parliament, 
and  demanding  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves.  Then 
the  Government  sent  them  word  :  "  Go  to  your  homes  ; 
the  slave  is  free." 


132  THE  REJECTED   STONE. 

There  is  no  reason  why  Americans  should  not  be  as 
earnest  and  persistent  as  their  English  relatives.  There 
is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  have  our  six  men  to 
carry  in  our  petitions  for  emancipation  into  the  next 
Congress,  and  our  800,000  or  4,000,000  women  besieg 
ing  the  government  for  that  peace  which  can  alone 
repose  on  justice. 

Many  a  young  man  is  asking  in  these  times,  How 
can  I  best  befriend  my  country  ?  Young  man  !  You 
can  befriend  it  by  letting  your  manhood  utter  itself  in 
word  and  deed  ;  by  bearing  with  your  whole  weight, 
howsoever  you  can  make  it  felt,  for  the  liberation  of 
the  slave,  which  now  means  the  liberation  and  peace 
of  your  country.  Many  a  noble  woman  yearns  to  serve 
in  some  post  of  duty,  and  complains  in  her  secret  soul 
of  the  hard  fate  that  seems  to  shut  her  out  from  places 
of  active  usefulness.  Women  !  Remember  those  who 
were  "  last  at  the  cross  and  earliest  at  the  sepulchre," 
—  remember  those  800,000  women  who  wrung  from 
England  that  bright  First  of  August,  —  the  Coronal 
Day  of  Nations,  —  and  swear  a  sacred  oath  to-day  that 
your  prayer  shall  be  heard  in  the  Capitol  of  this  nation 
imploring  liberty  and  justice  for  the  slave,  —  the  things 
that  belong  to  our  country's  peace. 


THE   END. 


Cambridge  :   Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelovv,  &  Co. 


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INTER  LftPvARY 


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LOAN 


K.   -^ 

IA/Md 

\- 

It  1  r\  \  /      r-v              -1  ^  '^  A 

1977' 

- 

MAY  8    1960 

5MAR'S3AK 

APR  5     1963 


- 


p;T  ^9  199882 


-    Al 


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LD  21-100- 


YB  37599 


931515 


C 


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